It was this expertise that impressed Filippo’s sequence Grazie. A title of double meanings, it refers back to the thought of sacrifice-free graces and items from God, one thing Filippo sees “as a rarity each in faith in addition to day by day life”, in addition to referring to the casual Italian ‘thanks’. All through the sequence Filippo creates hyper-real, intensely close-up work of classical non secular figures and imagery, trying to display “the binary relationship between ache and ecstasy in non secular iconography”. The close-up focus of every face depicted removes the context of every portray, making it exhausting to decipher whether or not the expression and tears are one in every of disappointment, or overwhelming pleasure.
Every one of many work all through Grazie has a heightened sheen, with highlights used meticulously to offer an unearthly glow. This impact, Filippo explains, is to offer the impression of plastic – straight referencing the plastic collectible figurines he encounters on daily basis throughout Milan. This creates “an additional layer of distance between the viewer and the topic depicted”, because the artist believes such collectible figurines have created oversaturation in on a regular basis life. To create the impact Filippo works in layers of brush and airbrush till a smoothness is achieved, with no brush strokes seen “in order that the portray itself wouldn’t even appear painted within the first place,” he says.
Reflecting on the undertaking, Filippo hopes that individuals don’t view it as a mockery or ridicule of faith, or the plight of girls’s struggling. Merely, the sequence has proved a method for Filippo to work via his personal private emotions in the direction of Christianity and the way it has been visualised, repurposed and bought on a mass scale. “I hope it’s seen as a private reflection made bodily,” ends Filippo. “In a method, it’s my very own exorcism via work.”
