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Studio Hour Ep.5: Luca Ponsato
Recorded: Feb. 11, 2026 Duration: 1:00:03Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, artist Luca Ponsato shared insights on the intersection of art and technology, highlighting partnerships with Midjourney and Adobe. He explored themes of isolation and transformation in his work, reflecting current trends in the art community that resonate with personal experiences and emotional resilience.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Music Thank you. Thank you. wow um i would like to point out the amount of emoji flooding we just got from
the schiller account so huge shout out out to Bernardo for some excellent work.
Oh, there it goes again. So welcome everyone. Welcome to Studio Hour. Today's guest is Luca
Ponsato. And he's an artist who works across poetry, AI, generative systems and hybrid forms. So
AI, generative systems, and hybrid forms. So first of all, let me just sound check Luca before I get
any further. Can you hear me, Luca? Loud and clear. Can you hear me? Loud and clear as well. Fabulous.
Welcome. Thank you. So one of the things that's fascinating about Luca's work is the existence of this tension between kind of absence and intensity.
So if you look at his work, a lot of his figures are kind of faceless, stripped of markers like skin tone or any sort of specificity.
And yet there's like this very strong emotional charge, which makes his work
pretty much unmistakable. So there's this motive of fire, isolation, waiting. So we're going to
talk about all sorts of things, Hopper Midjourney, Phoenix's, P5JS, and why sometimes losing yourself
can be a way to find your voice. So I'll let Luca say hello and say a little
bit more about himself. Thank you very much for the introduction, Joanna. Well, hi, everybody.
I'm Luca Ponsada. I'm an artist and director of artist relations for Hildebrand Management.
So I am full time in this space, more online than I ever intended to be.
But I work with Midjourney and Adobe to create artworks that are posted pretty much every day at this point.
And just enjoying the journey.
That's wonderful.
And, you know, it's very interesting
to hear more about your journey.
For those of you who might not know,
I've spoken to Luca before about his work,
and I'm currently writing a piece about him.
So I know a little bit more about his work so I'm
going to kind of set us off to the very beginning so I remember in our conversation you said Night
Hawks was one of the works that kind of pulled you into Web 3 so what was it about that painting that kind of hit you?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a great time to talk about it because the piece that I made inspired by Nighthawks just sold late last night to someone who reached out about it.
But Nighthawks specifically, I find a lot of myself in paintings that deal with isolation.
Not because I'm a particularly lone wolf type of person,
but I find a lot of beauty in it.
And Nighthawk specifically depicts such a scene of reality,
this sort of diner-esque spot on the corner, three different people
hanging out along with the, you know, the person that works there.
And it has that feeling of isolationism, of someone who is within the confines of a building
with other people, but has no way to sort of speak to them in a way that would get them out of that.
There might be pleasantries involved.
There might be, you know, small talk, oh gosh, Tom, Tom Orchard.
It was called, when we leave this place, it's gone.
And that, and that really hooked me because there was this sense when I was
first getting into web three and probably for the first year or so there,
the way we all sort of get into it with PFPs and, you know,
some people get in with generative art and whatnot, but this sort of
history of art continuing to make its way through the digital art movement. And these artists who
have this real technical ability, also having these cultural senses and these, you know,
this historical knowledge that they want to bring forward with them as well. And I think that was
something that Tom showed really well,
something that a lot of other artists do, you know,
very well in their own right. I mean,
I think that there's so much previous art culture that's still being brought
forward nowadays. I mean, if we look at even just saying like ACK's Starry Night piece,
that can just be a reference right there. But there's so much outside of that, that
artists all the time are referencing classical paintings,
that it really had me enthralled by what was going on here.
That makes a lot of sense. And it's very interesting because earlier on in your response,
That makes a lot of sense. And it's very interesting because
you were mentioning the sense of isolation seems to draw you thematically also.
But yeah, I think also Tom Mochard is a fascinating figure. And I was kind of curious also,
figure um and i was kind of curious also like is there something that draws you um into these more
isolated um kind of scenarios so what i mean by that is is it the familiarity of the space
meshed with the estrangement of people or is it the fact that there was a certain level of abstraction
in the faces of these figures where it kind of makes things feel
more personal to you than hardcore realism?
I think that there's a couple layers to that.
One, I think the feeling of isolation is one that we can all relate to at one point or another in our lives.
Unfortunately so.
And the two artists in here that do it particularly well, who I'd love to shout out, are Delta Sauce and Manfredi.
They both work with isolation at different points in their artworks,
and they're two artists that really bring me in with that.
But it also goes to that next layer that you're speaking about
with the abstraction of the faces that allows you to put yourself
into a work much more.
And Delta and Manfredi both do that in their own ways.
Delta, maybe a bit more with the abstraction of it.
Manfredi, a bit more with the dark figures
who we can't make out sort of facial features
or things like that to identify another person.
With myself, it comes with the fire.
And I love art that you can place yourself into. And it definitely becomes much easier when there aren't parts of the figure that differentiate it from the way that you identify yourself.
think that isolation, it carries with it a lot of emotion. It's not trying to depict just one
thing because we all experience isolation in very different ways. Some people, you know, are people
that like to be alone. Some people don't like to be alone. And, you know, there's a choice on one
side of that and a lack of a choice on the other side. And so there really is so much depth to portraying someone in an isolated moment that just really
attracts me to it.
And I see that like by using this abstraction and kind of trying to make your work more relatable? Do you feel like
there's a step beyond this need to make your work feel universal? Or do you feel like sometimes you
might be protecting something within yourself by doing that? I think that it's much more subconscious than it might come off.
I live with my girlfriend now and she doesn't use Twitter too much,
but she follows me there here and on Instagram that I just started within the last two months.
And so she sees my artwork coming up on Instagram much more often.
And there will be times where I'll go and I'll post something over on Instagram
and she'll either text me if we're, if we're not together or ask me in person, if we are together.
And she's like, is this based on like what happened two days ago? Or is this based on
what happened now? And I'll say, you know, not consciously. The other day I was waiting
for her at the airport. I was picking her up and her flight got delayed. Rather, like it was sitting
on the tarmac for an hour, but her phone was dead. And so she had no way to reach out to me.
And I'm an extremely patient person, sometimes to a fault. So I was kind of, you know, no issue just sitting there.
I was making art.
And it was a picture of a car on fire waiting at a light.
And the title of the piece was Places to Be.
And she got into the car and she threw her phone on the charger.
And, you know, it was a little bit of a trip back.
So she started looking at Instagram.
She saw the piece and she was like, I'm so sorry.
Like, I can't apologize enough that I was late. And I was like, what are you talking about?
It wasn't conscious that that piece was inspired by that moment. But I was there sitting in the car
with, frankly, no place to be. It was like 10 o'clock at night. But I can grab from those
moments around me and bring it with me into creating the art.
That's actually fascinating. It's almost like you use art as a processing mechanism in a way,
and then you kind of see these subconscious patterns pop out. Then I was kind of I wanted to gauge into a part of our conversation a while back so I remember
there was poetry before visuals and I remember you were minting poems as was it gifts or was it
stills it was gifts no they were presents yeah to uh to the artists who inspired the work amazing so what and what were you trying to express then when you're creating these
so i had written poetry when i was younger um i mean i think a lot of us you know have written
poetry throughout our lives whether we were forced to do so in an English class in high school and hated it or chose to do so, you know, as a part of a Mother's Day card. And I stopped doing it for
some time. And getting back into it, I can't remember exactly when I wrote the, I can remember
the moment I was sitting in my car in the parking lot outside of the law firm that I was working at, and I wrote a poem for an artwork by an artist who went by Storm, Jay's art, and sent it to express emotions that I had been processing for a long time.
I had a lot of difficulty with mental health going on in my late teens, early 20s.
And then COVID hit.
I was furloughed from my job.
And so I was still living in New York city. I'd actually moved into an apartment in New York city, uh,
on the last day of February and everything in the entire city shut down about two weeks later.
And the person I was seeing at the time was a nurse at the hospital. So I didn't leave New York City to get out.
And so I was alone a lot of the time and having a lot of difficulty sort of just being by myself and being with those emotions where I'd always kind of masked them in different ways.
ask them in different ways. And so I started seeing a therapist and took probably,
you know, two or three months of seeing a therapist weekly to actually start
talking about my emotions because I had never done anything like that before.
Not for any reason of anyone around me, but just for the way that I thought and the way that I interacted with the world.
And I was finding therapy to be very helpful, but I wasn't good at talking about these things yet.
for different valves to sort of let the pressure out a little bit because it was all coming out
in this one stream, not towards a therapist, but with a therapist. Outside of that one hour every
single week, I still wasn't talking about my emotions, wasn't talking about my feelings,
wasn't talking about my mental state. For that one hour, that faucet was gushing, but
outside of that, it was bone dry.
And so I was looking for other ways to sort of let out that pressure.
And poetry came back to me in a way where I find writing poetry to flow very, I don't want to say easily, but sort of seamlessly for me.
I don't want to say easily, but sort of seamlessly for me.
And in the beginning, it was trying to find rhymes.
But within doing that, it sort of forces you to the next, to release that pressure.
You're like, oh, what rhymes with die?
You're like, oh, what rhymes with die?
Okay, well, now I have to find something with that that works with the feeling of this poem.
It continues it well.
And it forces you into contemplating those different things that not only work with what you're writing, but also rhyme.
And so it forces you to these different words that can help express something potentially
different than the way that you would have said it if it was just a sentence to someone
else.
That was really wonderful.
And thank you for sharing, by the way.
I know it's difficult to talk about these things sometimes.
But I was very curious if throughout that process, did you feel like you were kind of pushing yourself really far out of your comfort zone by being vulnerable in a way that's more public?
Because I feel like art, whether it's poetry, film, you know, visual art and painting, whatever, it feels like a very open way to express your feelings.
It's a very vulnerable state.
And do you feel like that may have also kind of helped you with this healing process you
were embarking in?
I think it was definitely great. That first moment of talking to Storm and posting the poetry years ago, but still extremely supportive in terms of experimenting and putting oneself out there.
I think it was definitely great.
And so the responses that I was getting both from artists and friends who were collectors alike really built up that confidence in continuing to do it.
And it was something that ended up feeling much more natural than anything else, especially with
being in an anonymous account. So it was no one that had sort of preconceived notions of me
outside of the way that I've interacted with them here that could
taint what I was writing at all.
That's amazing.
Did you feel like visually limited at that stage?
A beautiful way to transition it into the next part of the journey, which all started
with Schiller.
It was Bernardo and Fungi during an office hour space when I went up on stage and asked
them about wanting to have more of a visual component to my art.
At that point, I was writing my poems first in the Notes app, then typing them out on the typewriter.
And I was voicing them over, going into Premiere Pro, just adding the audio to just a standard extended video.
So it was just a picture extended in Premiere, exporting it and posting it as a video on my Twitter.
And I was really enjoying that, but I wanted there to be some sort of visual component
to the written word and the language that I was using when I was speaking,
the inflections and the tones.
And so they both talked me through the idea of using generative art
to add a visual component to my poetry.
And that was something that became really big for me.
And it expanded the way that I knew that I could create art.
Artists always say, if I could paint, if I couldn't paint, if I could say it, I wouldn't paint, I wouldn't draw, I wouldn't sculpt.
I could say it, I could write it.
But I wanted to add that visual component, something that was more abstract along with the more direct portion of it.
And that was how I ended up getting into P5JS,
using my poetry and ChatGPT to write the code
and write the script for the generative artworks
that accompanied my poetry in the beginning.
That's really cool.
And I was wondering, also shout out to Bernardo. I
don't know if Fungi isn't in the audience right now, but that's such an interesting pivot and
like a little push that they gave you. That's really cool. I was wondering, so you experimented
with P5.js. And now I'm wondering, what was that first moment when AI tools made something you couldn't do in P5.js?
Like, when did this transition kind of happen?
Are you talking about sort of the change over to mid-journey?
Yeah.
Okay. It was actually seeing Echo 33, a brilliant artist who works
with generative art and AI to create things that, you know, P5JS, 3JS, whatever someone is using to
create generative art that it couldn't do. I wanted to make things that felt more like abstract painting.
And I got to a point that I felt like I couldn't get past without using another tool.
So I was taking my generative artworks, bringing them into mid-journey, prompting along with
them, and experimenting with what could come about from that.
And I feel like I got to a place that I really enjoyed, but I wanted more figurative works.
I wanted to start bringing a bit more of that realism into it, bringing more of a narrative
forward. And I felt like I wasn't able to do that personally. I, bringing more of a narrative forward.
And I felt like I wasn't able to do that personally.
I know that there are a lot of artists that can,
and I personally couldn't bring it past that point.
So I started looking towards iconic classical paintings.
And the second or third piece that I ever created with mid journey was the way I see myself, uh, which is based on a narcissist by Caravaggio.
Um, and there was such an incredible reaction to that, that I knew that I was, I was on
I knew that I was on the right track at the very least.
the right track at the very least.
And that truly was, I think, the third time I'd ever gone into Mid Journey.
So three, four days of working with these iconic paintings,
which, by the way, I feel like that attraction towards Caravaggio
is probably the Italian blood in you,
doing a little number, which makes total sense
because also they're technically so impressive.
And he was one of the fathers of chiaroscuro.
And to those of you in the audience who don't know what chiaroscuro is,
it just means chiaro, scuro dark and it was just this
technique where they would use um diffusion with their fingers to make things look almost smoked
which is called sfumato and it gave a lot of dimension to pieces and that's when it started art started to become very deep visually and sorry with that with that explained
I know something clicked when you're working with these very iconic paintings so
I know you probably saw yourself in the work but I'd like to know what changed like what clicked for you where you're like oh this is
this is about to be
quite the journey I'm about to embark in
it was a lot of
looking inward
I would go on to
wiki art and I would go through
you know all different types of painters and styles and just taking things in.
But it really was that angel devil dynamic that had gotten me started with the
way I see myself, the piece,
because there was this real difficulty with a negative self-image and it was it was this dynamic that
allowed me to look at these pieces and see a different way of portraying them the way that
I wanted to bring that sort of mental health issue of a negative self-image into classical artwork, something that these
artists didn't really talk about because it wasn't something that was talked about in
any way, and bring them into a narrative that worked for me.
So there was quite a bit of that.
I was creating artworks probably two, three times a week. And all of them were
dealing with that angel and devil dynamic. Okay, that kind of gave me the perfect segue,
because I was going to ask you, the devil looking in the mirror, what did that mean to you at the
time? It was definitely something that was about the reflection. It was
looking at something that, you know, I like to consider myself a pretty well-liked person.
Frankly, I think we all do. But it was being unable to see what other people were taking in.
The positive nature that they were seeing and wanting to be able to see that within myself, but being unable to.
frankly, self-hate and to not feel that from other people is one that definitely makes you
sort of want to step outside of your body and look on, be a fly on the wall in your own daily
life and say, like, what are these people seeing that I'm not seeing because clearly we're looking at these interactions in a
completely different way.
And that was really important for me to be able to get out in the way of a
visual component, in the way of visual art and deal with that, frankly,
on a semi-daily basis.
That's really, really interesting.
I know at some point we were talking about this work
and this kind of angel and devil tension and polarization,
and I remember us talking about you not chasing a style,
but a voice.
And what's the difference to you between those two?
I think that we can all find a style that works for us,
depending on your chosen pathway in art, your medium, the frequency in which
you create, we can all find a style. But to be able to say something that people want to hear,
metaphorically speaking, is where art has really always drawn me in.
I love abstract painting.
I love generative art.
But I appreciate those for what I see.
And there's a difference in that and then works that are more figurative,
more based in realism, that I love them for
what I feel. And that to me is the biggest difference, uh, to be able to make someone
feel something based off of an artwork, to feel nostalgic, to feel seen, um, is such a gift for
an artist, um, you know, on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis, to be able to
feel that in any sense, to make someone feel more seen by doing something that you're passionate
about is an absolute gift. Truly, I completely agree. And I think your works do a really good job of conveying a lot of emotions.
And, you know, the very intentional removal of any kind of specific detail on these figures makes it very, very relatable for people because they can just project themselves into your artworks.
for people because they can just project themselves into your artworks. But you're also
mentioning voice and that just got me thinking. I was wondering because, you know, working in
marketing, you're always thinking about brand voice and how different brands have different
voices and some brands have different voices across different platforms. And this is very transferable in art
because you experimented with poetry,
used tools like AI, generative, and then hybrid.
Do you feel like you have one voice across all of these
or do you feel like there are multiple selves,
like different tones and subtleties in each medium?
I think to a point, yes.
I think that they're all based, you know, it's one voice, it's my voice, but it is talking
about different things and some of them being more positive, some of them being more negative.
And some of them being more positive, some of them being more negative.
But I think that it is important to be very authentic with that voice.
However you choose to use it, whether it be for a positive, I hope that it's always for a positive, but some are more commentary based potentially on negative things.
You know, some are more commentary based potentially on negative things.
It is super important for me to have those shared moments with a viewer.
And so that is definitely something that I have always prioritized very heavily, not only in my collecting of art, but in the creating
of it, is wanting to have that intense, honestly, and intimate connection with either the creator
or the audience.
That makes a lot of sense and now speaking about this um motive that motif that kind of goes throughout your work
fire there's this you know fire isolation transformation um and i i see you returning
to fire constantly so i was wondering what does fire do that water or shadow doesn't for
you i think that's a beautifully phrased question um and it makes me think back to when i was in
grade school and i was in an english class and the teacher was telling us some different sort of
tips and tricks that a writer would use. And one of the things that that teacher brought up was that
when you're reading a book or when you're watching a movie, I guess it's more specific
to watching a movie, but they were trying to bring it over, is that when you're looking at someone and they start speaking out
loud about what they're thinking, it's because you can't get into their head. You can't have
that moment. It's either a voiceover or it is them actually just saying it out loud in that moment, talking about their thoughts.
And it brought me to a place where I was looking at paintings and looking at
artworks and saying, well,
what is going on in this protagonist's head, this, this figure,
this main figure's head, what's going on?
And it brought me back to
The Fallen Angel by Cabanel. And, you know, these iconic eyes,
you know, people see it as portraying this anger, this, you know, Lucifer being kicked out of heaven
and wanting to have this sort of dynamic that could present a viewer with this immediate knowledge of what is going on in the protagonist of the piece's head.
It was going on within their mind.
And fire really did that for me. It really gave me that opportunity to show someone who's looking at the
piece the anguish, the stress, the anxiety, whatever it might be based on the situation
and the environment that they're in, what is going on with that figure's mental state at that time.
figure's mental state at that time.
That's really cool because I was always wondering if this fire is,
is it destruction? Is it purification? Is it exposure?
What do you feel like it tends to be like nine out of 10 times?
I got the opportunity to talk with Lynette the other day
about this sort of idea of what the fire means
in particular pieces.
And I use the fire in two different ways.
I use it either the person, you know,
the figure's head is on fire
and it's depicting, you know, that mental state that can't be shown in any other way.
And a lot of the times I like to use it where they're sort of just going about their regular life in a way that sort of like no one else can see this.
in a way that sort of like no one else can see this.
Sometimes it is apparent to the other people, the other figures within the artwork.
But for the most part, it's just sort of someone interacting with daily life in their own way.
And other times the figure is not on fire and it's the environment.
A lot of times I like to use that as this sort of rebirth process to burn everything down, to be born anew, sort of the phoenix rising from the ashes.
Sometimes it is a bit more of having to live within that environment, but I really do like to use it as this rebirth moment.
But I really do like to use it as this rebirth moment.
That's really interesting.
And I think it translates really, really clearly.
And I was thinking, as you were speaking about this, about this isolation series where there's this man eating alone,
kind of waiting, not knowing who to call.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
So the isolation series was the generative art series,
but I think I'm thinking of Table for One
is the piece that you might be speaking about.
Yes, exactly.
And those moments really are born from
experiences that I've had. I was with a girlfriend, a partner for a very long time.
And it was coming out of that, that those emotions of like, what do I do on my own came about.
Always having someone sitting across the table from you and now being at it alone. I think that is probably where a lot of the love for isolation,
artworks depicting isolation comes from.
But it really is these moments of that inner anguish,
I think is a great way to put it.
You know, you see someone sitting alone at a table
and some people sort of see it as this
moment of confidence, this moment of, wow, that's great for them. Like they're, they're here alone.
They're, they're just out to enjoy their dinner, but you have no idea what's going on in that
person's head. They could have been going out for a first date and being stood up. This could be
their first time going back out to eat after, you know, a breakup or a divorce, their partner could have passed away
and they have no one to go with. And there's so much that is both said and unsaid in the artwork,
that one specifically, I think quite a bit of what I was just saying,
that can be portrayed with just a person sitting at a table alone.
Yeah, it's a pretty striking piece. And I think it's so interesting. And I was wondering if
this isolation that you were kind of experiencing at the time, was it something you were documenting or something you were trying to kind of exercise out of your system?
I think it was probably trying to get it out of the system.
I waited a bit for that
probably past the point that it would have been documenting it
so I want to say it was more of exercising it
and releasing it, releasing that pressure
because after that breakup
I didn't create for a certain period of time.
And it was probably six or seven months later
when I was in a new happy relationship.
It's the one I'm in now, and I'm very thankful for it,
that I felt like I could kind of be retrospective in that way.
And I think that that's a very interesting dynamic where I wasn't able to
work through it visually until I had worked through it emotionally.
until I had worked through it emotionally.
And it helped release those feelings, that anguish, that pain,
as I was developing this sense of emotional maturity again
in a very different way.
That's really wonderful.
And I wanted to kind of go a little bit into your process,
because, you know, as we spoke about a while back,
mid-jenny is public by default.
So did that exposure kind of affect your experimentation?
I don't know if I would say that the program itself
and the way that it runs through Discord
invited any feeling about the experimentation.
I think that there was just a desire to
really start creating with the visual component. And so I went to sort of the only program that I
knew about, um, you know, now so many different things have created and people are creating their
own models and all these different things. But at that time, however long it was, two, two and a half years
ago, that I felt that need to just get working on it and to just dive in. That couldn't be ignored.
And so whether I had to shout it in the town square or get to speak quietly about it in my
room, I was going to be talking about it metaphorically.
Quite right.
Excellent.
Are you moving towards a private server anytime soon, out of curiosity?
I think I kind of have to.
to um i'm i'm at the point where um i'll go back in and i'll see someone's working with
uh some of the prompts that i've been using at the time before that and frankly there's not much
of me that cares about that because if they're finding a way to express themselves with the
help of my words then that's a great thing as well.
But I do want a little bit more privacy in what I create before I make it public.
Just because I think that that's just sort of a natural development of the artist's process.
We all have different levels of privacy that we want with it,
and mine is as public as it can be in a way.
And so I think that there is a small desire, not a large one,
to grab a little bit of that privacy back.
That makes a lot of sense. And it's very interesting how mid-journey is such a
word-heavy thing that in my head, it makes a lot of sense that the progress of going from poetry
to generative and then to AI, it makes a lot of sense because there's a lot of language and
there's a lot of written communication that needs to happen and you're clearly very good
at it so um as i just wanted to point that out and i remember like in maybe at the time when
you're really going through it or kind of processing what you went through it. I know you referenced Hopper, Caravaggio, Magritte pretty intensely. And now I feel like
just maybe 30% of your work is now influenced by them. So I was wondering what shifted, like what overall um not much has changed in terms of the appreciation for uh the masters both new and old
um i still do the same things that i did in the past in terms of you know going on to wiki art and
uh looking at different artists almost every day um a lot of that has sort of changed in terms of
the reasoning for it before it was to get inspiration for new work now it's just to know
more um it's something that i find a lot of joy in uh both just getting to see the artwork but
also to learn more about particular artists and their methods.
But in terms of creating the artwork, I think it's having more of my own voice.
Before it was taking someone else's and sort of auto-tuning it or changing it up a bit in whatever way I can.
And now with such a visual language of my own,
I find that I want to keep not repetition,
but consistency with it.
Before it was sort of switching between working with those artists' styles and their themes.
And now I feel like I have my own.
It's definitely been built up over a period of time.
But there is that desire to keep that consistency with my own voice.
And you're doing really well.
I think your work has become increasingly more consistent.
And I think it comes from you being able to distill
what you like from these masters and these artists that you're inspired by into your very
own language so I feel like what we were talking about earlier about voice versus style I think
you've kind of done a really good job at kind of making your own voice be heard in your work.
And as we are getting closer to time, I kind of wanted to maybe do a little round of quickfire questions.
So short answers only preferably.
But if you do feel the need to go deeper
into any of these questions, please do.
I love it.
Okay, perfect. Are you ready?
Let's do it.
Okay, Caravaggio or Magritte?
Magritte.
Nice. Harper's loneliness
in one word.
Steer. Oh, my god. Nice. Poetry before visuals, yes or no? Yes. Favourite hour to create?
Noon. Coffee, wine, or water? Coffee. Very Italian. I'm not surprised sorry most most overrated art advice
price value so true one thing ai can't replace
taste fire shadow
fire do you sketch first taste fire or shadow fire
do you sketch first
one artwork
you wish you had made
yourself
had or hadn't
that you had
like someone else's work
that you've seen around
and you're like
I wish I made that
mmm someone else's work that you've seen around and you're like, I wish I made that.
Oh, gosh.
I wish I was fast with this.
Blue by Tijo.
Ooh, very cool.
Collecting or creating?
Both.
Solid answer. What scares you more, irrelevance or creating? Both. Solid answer.
What scares you more,
irrelevance or repetition?
Repetition.
Most personal piece you've made?
The way I see myself.
Do you title before or after?
After. Isolation chosen or after? After.
Isolation chosen or imposed?
Imposed.
If you could choose one word to describe your art smell, imagine, your art has a smell, what would it be?
Hash.
It's legal in the state of New York, I think.
So if there are any cops here, nothing to see.
One word that you'd say describes isolation better than isolation?
I'll doubt.
Renaissance painter you'd grab a drink with?
Oh, gosh.
It's kind of hard because you don't know that much
like historically you don't know
that much about their personality
so you wouldn't know what they're like
but from their work
I don't know if this is wrong to say but Monet
that is not wrong to say
different period but you know what? I wouldn't grab
Yeah, I thought it was wrong.
No, I wouldn't grab drinks with Renaissance
painters anyway, because they all seemed
a little bit degenerate,
not in a funny way.
And Monet was really cool.
And what would
you say is the most misunderstood
part of your work?
... would you say is the most misunderstood part of your work? A contemporaneous nature.
Ooh, very good.
Do you believe in artistic destiny?
Yes.
A color you would avoid, like the plague?
Purple.
Okay.
I will not take offense to that.
What would you say you'd pick, Phoenix or Ashes?
Phoenix.
One artist people should be watching.
Hmm.
This is tough for someone who represents many artists.
I'm going to completely exclude them to not isolate anyone.
I would say RJ.
Amazing.
If your work were sound, what would it be?
The crackle of fire.
Ooh.
Oh, actually, that makes so much sense.
Okay.
A painting that still haunts you to this day.
Missing someone by bear.
Are you done evolving?
Not even close.
Excellent news.
And what are you on fire about right now the injected passion into the space in this past week or two hell yeah amazing okay i'm we have
five more minutes so by the way i think we went through like 30 questions just then.
So let's pat ourselves in the back.
So I'm now going to open the stage in case anyone has questions.
I'm going to give them a little time to come up.
Oh, oh, damn.
Okay, Shilla, coming in strong and quick.
GM, how's it going, everyone?
I just want to say, first of all, loving this
conversation. Joanna, you do such a great job interviewing. And Luca, it's been awesome just
to hear from you. I feel like it's been a while since we've been on a stage together. But as you
alluded to before, you know, we had a lot of conversations in the past. So it's amazing just
to hear from friends and see what they're up to.
Also, I just absolutely love those rapid fire questions.
You need to do more of those, Joanna.
I think those are brilliant.
But Luca, yeah, we, you know, know so much about your art and your process and kind of
your inspirations and what you've been through and
what has gone into your work. But I'm very interested in stuff outside of your creative
process and more about what has you excited in your personal life. I feel like in this space,
we often are so narrow, focused on like what's in front of us. But as with, you know, everyone I
meet in this space, I kind of want to learn more about who they are outside of the space. So I'm curious, what has you excited or has taken up your
time outside of your own creative work, or just your own work as artist relations? Yeah, if anything
comes to mind, we'd love to know what's got you excited. I really appreciate that. And great to be speaking with you on a space again.
I would say this recent move in, I'm living with my girlfriend now in South Carolina here.
And the last time that I lived with a significant other, it was very tumultuous.
Granted, we're still in sort of like the first month, month and a half of living together.
But it's definitely providing a lot more comfort.
This is someone that really allows me to be myself, as opposed to in the past where I felt like I needed to hide that a
lot more, frankly, almost entirely.
And doing so in your own home is something that really can affect someone.
You know, you sort of take the mask off when you enter the door of your own home or apartment
and sort of having to keep that on or put a different mask on when you enter that doorway
can really bring someone down and make them not only not feel seen, but not taking those
introspective looks.
So I think that this has been something that has been an incredible experience for me so far and one that I'm really looking forward to how it develops over the coming months and years.
Oh, man, that's awesome. What a today. It's been such a pleasure listening in.
And yeah, very excited for that recent move of yours.
So thanks so much, Luca.
I feel like that was an excellent question
to kind of tie this wonderful space.
Luca, your work feels like it's way less about spectacle and more about
internal combustion which is so refreshing in this space so thank you so so much for being
open about the fire and about what rises after it and I think I speak for our entire team
when I say we're very excited to see what you do and what you head in the future.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. And if I could just cap this off real quick with a request from everyone. Today,
when you're scrolling on the timeline and you're liking other people's work, if you could take the time just once today
to comment or reply or DM that artist
instead of just liking it or reposting it,
I'm sure they would love to hear from you.
You guys better do what Luca says.
I will absolutely do that.
Everybody else is under threat from me.
I will show up at your house.
All right.
Thank you so much, Luca, again.
That was amazing.
Thank you so much, Joanna.
That was such a fun hour.
Appreciate you taking the time and the opportunity.
