The Next Day (2023) – Digital mockup.
The Next Day – Act II. is a 210 x 105 cm triptych collage in connection with The Day Shall Come – Act I. telling of real or fantastic otherworlds where alien golden rhombuses librate in a pinkish sky and the mating animals previously taken away by the ‘astroarks’ in the Act I are now regenerates in hybrid forms on a distant planet.
Two astronauts observe the scene from a higher point taking a selfie of cosmic vanitas. These animal-flora-mechanical chimeras were created in ‘collaboration’ with the artificial intelligence algorithm Midjourney. Then they were post-produced, printed, cut, and glued over a pink painted wooden board.
The Next Day (2023) – triptych total.
Both collages were exhibited during the competition/art show Space One II organised by Studio Cico gallery in collaboration with La Sapienza University of Rome at the School of Aerospace Engineering.
NOTE
The concept of chimerism [gr. χίμαιρα, propr. “goat”] is fascinating because in our imagination it calls to mind hybrid biological forms that are earlier, alternative or even later than the human one inscribed in a biological-evolutionary continuum between kingdoms and species, between dream and reality.
Inside is the human desire for immortality and animal enhancement of certain characteristics to redeem oneself from the finiteness and contingency of form, from human biological deficiency, from the claustrophobia of being oneself forever.
When a child disguises himself as a tiger and roars, he is a little chimera. Cosplayer disguises are also often chimeras. Proteus transformations and Ovidian metamorphoses are examples of “chimerisms.”