A.Icon

This work begins with a question: if artificial intelligence re-elaborates the image of Jesus starting from the Holy Shroud, what does that image truly become? Can it be considered an icon? Could it even be the most authentic icon we possess?

This work does not offer an answer: it poses the question.

Icons have always been the re-presentation of a previous reference. But what happens when that reference is filtered through history and technology, and in turn becomes a new reference image for the hand of an artist? Are we still within the course of the history of art and faith, or have we already departed from it?

Behind this Christ appears an aerial view of New York, a symbol of modernity, energy, and progress. And yet, for me, the meaning is spiritual: even historical and technological becoming may already be contained within the eternal gaze of God. In this perspective, even artificial intelligence is already held within His mind, just as the sacrifice of the Son was already present at the moment of His birth.

In the time of Easter, AICON is the disenchanted prayer of a man stripped of all meaning, a vain and unmotivated impulse of faith against the anguish generated by progress: that God may still watch over us.