Two workers chat during their break time, eating candy. So begins visual artist Francesco Meloni‘s (1973) imaginative tale that inspires the birth of his sculpture series entitled Cils. This brief intro already provides visual cues: the construction site and candy, two elements placed in relation in Meloni’s sculptures.
More precisely, the viewer is confronted with concrete blocks made eccentric through the inclusion of elements such as colored acrylic furs and feathers, in addition to the various geometric textures that adorn the rough blocks. In this way, the imaginations of the two workers, intent on dreaming of the luxurious lives of the future owners of the skyscrapers they themselves are building, are translated into sculpture.

The artistic-philosophical training of Francesco Meloni, a multifaceted artist active between Cagliari and Milan, is reflected in his research, focused on the relationship between human and nature and between human beings. The use of architectural metaphors, and in particular the reference to the construction site, have the function of investigating the dynamics of class and exploitation. The distinctive element of Francesco Meloni’s works is concrete, which, as the artist says, “is the most suitable material to represent the rift between man and nature and the exploitation of man on man.”
Cis series consists of different types of concrete blocks, called “Blocks,” which take on different shapes and characters depending on the elements the artist combines. Some are covered with tiles, alluding to a home environment, others feature silk-screen printing that refers instead to street art and city walls, and still others involve the use of ashlar slabs, so as to create surface ornaments. An interesting and ambiguous detail is the iron rods sticking out of the blocks; Francesco covers them with color, transforming them into what appear to be candy canes or straws.
The colorful and fun aesthetic of his sculptures allows the artist to address relevant social issues in a light-hearted way, striking viewers with bright colors and eccentric shapes. Francesco Meloni’s works will also be featured at (Un)fair, the young Milanese art fair that can be visited from March 3 to 5, 2023 at Superstudio Maxi.

As in a karmic cycle, everything comes back in the illustrations of Jeremyville, an American illustrator, designer, cartoonist and painter. Indeed, in his narrative works it always seems to come down to a restoration of order and serenity. In general, Jeremyville’s illustrations communicate a positive and hopeful message. For example, in the illustration NO WORRIES a man is walking through the door of the future but his large backpack of worries is too big and does not allow him to pass. The man leaves the backpack on the ground, which melts as he passes. With four simple sequences, Jeremyville illustrates one of our generation’s greatest social anxieties – the future – while conveying hope to the audience. In many of his illustrations, the theme of love and couples is present, always with positive implications. Examples are some of the works currently on display at the Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan that depict convivial moments of couples or more abstract images. In one of these, the faces of a man and a woman can be seen merging into a single circle, becoming a large sun that gives off light, and in the lower right-hand corner reads one of the many sweet messages the artist sends to his audience: “this moment with you.”

There are religious myths that peoples have celebrated with rites and ceremonies for millennia, others that have imposed themselves in the more superficial layers of society in recent years, among them consumerism and ibrands-at least as artist Pietro Sedda puts it. The artist’s provocative work in fact seeks to contrast two different worlds, which entrust their spirituality to very different idols, on the one hand Visnu and on the other Prada, Dior and Balenciaga.
Sedda’s works on paper recall Hindu symbolism, set against the myths of Western modernity. The artist’s is a satire towards the half of our planet that has lost its most spiritual part; a semantic confrontation between mythological universes emerges .

The artist’s work starting March 6 will be on display at Big Eyes Art Gallery, a small gallery in the center of Bologna, on the occasion of the exhibition titled “DIOSCÚRI,” a title that alludes to mythology and the theme of the double: double culture of reference, double semantic register.
The protagonist of the works is precisely Visnu, represented with the blue belle and covered by the tides, a balance between masculine and feminine, between power and beauty, but also between the two worlds set in opposition. Along with religious symbols, the deity wears a recognizable Balenciaga cap, which would guarantee the immortality of the Western world.
Another element that Pietro Sedda inserts is the black hole, a tribute to the artist Anish Kapoor, an Englishman of Indian descent whose art has united the two cultures featured in Sedda’s project.

When in 1961 the artist Piero Manzoni made 90 cans similar to those used for tinned meat and applied the label ‘Merda d’Artista’ to them, the art world was invested by Manzoni’s subversive wave. In sixty years, the art system has changed and so has the expressive power of works, new virtual worlds have even sprung up in which art can live and it is there that artist Fè (Federica Sutti) has chosen to realise her own homage to the original work, with an NFT called ‘Crypto Merda d’Artista‘.

The artist has brought the work into digital, taking up its main elements, such as the packaging and label.
The new work consists of a 25-second video loop that also cites the previous work in its choice of sales methods. Artist’s Crypto Shit’ will in fact be released on the NFT artwork circuit on 29 May, with a drop starting at 12 noon. Fè will give more information in the coming weeks, but another point of contact with Manzoni’s work is the price. In fact, at the time, the artist sold the cans (30g in weight) at the current price of pure gold, and Federica Sutti will make her own 30MB version available at the equivalent value of 30 grams of gold in crypto currencies.