Zo als de Stad

“As the City” is a reflection on the current state of ‘the greatest human invention,’ developed by urbanist and multidisciplinary artist Jacopo Grilli (Art of Cities). Through painting, sculpture, video, and poetry, the exhibition invites us to observe the city from afar, with a critical eye, infused with irony, drama, and seriousness toward the future and the organisms (human and non-human) that inhabit it. It is an attempt to view ourselves from an emotional distance, not through a satellite, not through data collection, not through numbers, but through the energies that we both destroy and create within our cities. Since things can only be transformed, it serves as an observation of how cities function as laboratories of change. The visual research is a collection of metaphors: the city as a system to be renewed, the city as an ecosystem, as a trap, as a spark of knowledge, as a temple of human contradiction, and more. The exhibited works are the result of artistic observation and, simultaneously, a critical and spatial proposal for thecity. This combination of aesthetic, philosophical, and spatial research is the hallmark of the author, who operates at the intersection of design and imagination, using the fine arts to develop and guide an open narrative about our primary human habitat.