PAINT ON PIXEL
NFT / DIGITAL ART
PUBLIC INSTALL
OTHER WORKS
EXHIBITIONS
Works such as LIFE IN BETA, AI WILL SAVE THE WORLD, and NFTs ARE DEAD address themes including the myth of progress, the outsourcing of human agency to technology, and the volatility of value in digital culture. These statements, only seemingly straightforward, introduce ambiguity and contradiction, inviting deeper interpretation.
The series expands through the project BLACKOUT, presented between Milan and La Spezia, where large-scale urban billboards amplify this research, transforming public space into a site of collective inquiry into the relationships between technology, identity, and the future.
This work, exploring the future of digital art in a world that is constantly changing and whose future is decidedly impactful. The phrase ‘NFTs are dead’ emerges not as a denial but as an incitement, a provocative stimulus pushing us towards the liminal spaces of thought. In this provocation lies a strong principle of contradiction.
The visual form, essential and almost clinical, which characterizes the series, once again serves a conceptual rather than an aesthetic purpose. By stripping away any superfluous element, the work concentrates attention on a condition of suspension that it seeks to evoke. There is no promise of progress, no salvific declaration, but rather the exposure of an open, unstable, and unresolved state.
The choice of Milan as the project’s first stop holds strong symbolic weight: the city is historically regarded as Italy’s capital of visual communication and advertising. From here, the initiative will gradually expand to other Italian and international cities.
Phrases such as SWALLOW PROGRESS, MACHINES ARE LOYAL, and THE FUTURE IS GENERATED cut through the urban landscape, inscribing an ambiguous and unsettling lexicon that lays bare the deep contradictions between technology and contemporary identity.
At the heart of BLACKOUT lies the philosophical practice of maieutics, once again central to Skygolpe’s approach. The work continues his effort to weave this ancient method into the fabric of today’s reality. Whereas in the Socratic tradition, questioning was the vehicle of doubt, here it is the affirmation that plays this role, declarative enigmas carved into public space that act as silent detonators, cracking open the structures of thought and inducing a state of inner reflection.
This tension is epitomized by the phrase ART WITHOUT ARTISTS. It moves beyond the topic of accessibility in image-making to address the fading presence of the creative subject in the age of automation. In a world where images are generated by systems capable of assimilating and reprocessing the entirety of humanity’s artistic legacy, the foundations of modern art, authorship, originality, the singular voice—begin to fracture. Yet rather than signaling a final crisis, this condition represents a critical threshold: a moment that demands a rethinking of the artist’s role, the nature of creative action, and the meaning of aesthetic production itself. BLACKOUT situates itself precisely within this fracture, not to resolve it, but to intensify it and transform it into a space of active inquiry.
Beyond its reference to Socratic maieutics, BLACKOUT is embedded in a broader theoretical framework, engaging deeply with fundamental reflections on language and technology. Notably, Skygolpe’s work resonates with Martin Heidegger’s thought, particularly his 1954 essay The Question Concerning Technology, in which he describes technology as a “mode of revealing”, one that simultaneously unveils and conceals reality. The work echoes this insight, suggesting that what technology reveals is never fully transparent, but marked by a persistent interpretative opacity.
In continuity with some of the most radical artistic experiments of the late 20th century, BLACKOUT also follows the path paved by figures such as Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Lawrence Weiner, artists who transformed language into both a critical instrument and a visual form. As in Holzer’s Truisms or Weiner’s Statements, the text here doesn’t convey a single, definitive message but instead becomes an event: a linguistic apparition that invites the viewer into an open, unresolved confrontation. The messages dispersed throughout the work are intentionally contradictory, destabilizing any linear communicative logic and undermining the certainties on which many dominant cultural narratives are built.
This rich web of philosophical and cultural references is not a nostalgic homage, nor is it mere provocation. Rather, it forms the theoretical backbone of a deliberately open and complex work, one that seeks to provoke questions about our current condition, the ambivalence of progress, and the inescapable entwinement with technology.
An invitation to conscious reflection, not to synthesis, but to the acceptance of instability.
An aesthetic and intellectual experience that embraces contradiction as the original condition of our time.
“LE MACCHINE SONO FEDELI” (MACHINES ARE LOYAL) Via Battista Grassi, Milano
“ARTE SENZA ARTISTI” (ART WITHOUT ARTISTS) Piazzale Istria 14, Milano
“IL FUTURO È GENERATO” (THE FUTURE IS GENERATED) Via Rogoredo 95, Milano
“EMPATIA DIGITALE” (DIGITAL EMPATHY) Viale Bodio 17, Milano
“IL NUOVO DIO È DISPONIBILE H 24” (THE NEW GOD IS AVAILABLE 24/7) Viale Sarca 375, Milano
“DONA LA TUA MEMORIA” (OFFER YOUR MEMORY) Via Variante Cisa,
La Spezia
“INGOIA IL PROGRESSO” (SWALLOW THE PROGRESS) Via Variante Cisa, La Spezia
“EMPATIA DIGITALE” (DIGITAL EMPATHY) Via Aurelia, La Spezia
The work begins with an explicit visual citation: Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. Yet the reference is not approached with nostalgia or reverence, but rather as a conceptual prompt, used to question the current status of the gesture, of identity, and of authorship within a framework governed by automated processes.
The video was generated entirely through artificial intelligence. This decision is not technical, but conceptual. It removes manual intervention from the production process, shifting focus toward delegation, toward the algorithm as active executor, and toward the critical value of the output itself. In CONTACT, the gesture of touch is never fully realized. Even when hands appear to clasp, a sense of estrangement or detachment lingers. Human, robotic, and hybrid hands approach without ever fully converging, or do so only momentarily, producing a sustained tension that generates a condition of ambivalence in the viewer.
The film challenges the classical binary between subject and tool: the robot is no longer a mere prosthesis, but an actor within a posthuman aesthetic in which the boundaries between the artificial and the organic are increasingly unstable.