Portrait courtesy the artist
b. 1979, Italy; lives and works in Tuscany, Italy
2009 Art Students League, New York
2006 Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, MA
This mesmerising artwork, Nuvola Duemilaventi (which translates to Cloud 2020), created by Michelangelo Bastiani, is a video hologram in a bottle. It displays a transition between the real and the virtual, with elements of hypnosis, dream and mystery. Bastiani, who lives and works in Tuscany, manages to give shape to the immateriality of the cloud, bringing it on stage in all its phases: calm, white, vaporous and soft, with sinuous small movements, capable to transmit a sense of peace, until it becomes stormy, agitated, constantly changing in the state of condensation. Here, it appears grey and tumultuous, alternating raindrops and sudden lightning. Metaphors of climate change and the transformation itself, and of the unpredictability of the human psyche and its torments, Bastiani's cloud virtually reproduces a natural entity full of symbolism and hidden meanings. This has certainly been a stormy year so far, yet perhaps there will be a silver lining?