June 30th, 2023, a memorable day. Travis Scott’s concert is still the talk of the town. With his first and only date in Italy, the world-famous rapper managed to gather fans from all over the peninsula at the Snai San Siro Hippodrome in Milan. For the occasion, the equally controversial street artist Ozmo created – for I-Days Milano Coca-Cola – a site-specific work right on the walls of the Hippodrome, with the intention of celebrating the relationship between music and art.
With his usual provocative and never banal style, Ozmo creates the work ‘Dr. Avallo‘ full of symbolism and hidden meanings. The work depicts a horseman – whose head is not visible – riding a horse while piercing a dragon with a sword. The readings are different. On the one hand, the artist is clearly inspired by Vittore Carpaccio‘s painting, evoking values such as courage, resistance and power; on the other hand, the work can be interpreted through the suggestions of Carl Gustav Jung and thus read what appears to be a killing, as a taming.
Undoubtedly, the location suggests a further reference, that to San Siro in Genoa, paying homage to the Italian Renaissance. The realism of the subjects is, however, broken by a large fluorescent red sign that somehow ‘self-vandalises’ his own work.
