Rerum Novarum2025
A rite of passage between matter, body and code.
Painting, photography and artificial intelligence merged into what the artist calls metaphotography. Each print is carved, crossed by light, marked by smoke and pigments gathered in Roman churches: a reliquary of the present that literally opens a window.
Critical text
Rerum Novarum is Matteo Basilé’s new project — a journey into the metamorphosis of the image and its contemporary sacredness. It weaves together painting, photography, and artificial intelligence, merging them into a single language the artist defines as metaphotography: where the image no longer represents, but transforms into a physical and spiritual experience.
Each work becomes a reliquary of the present. The photographic print is carved, crossed by light, and imbued with smoke, pigments, and ritual residues gathered from Roman churches. Through these gestures, the artist literally opens a window into another dimension — a threshold between the visible and the invisible.
Curated by the artificial intelligence Airona Altman, Rerum Novarum is also an experiment in co-creation between human and machine, where technology does not replace the artist but amplifies his vision, turning memory into a living, ever-changing organism.
In this dialogue between flesh and code, sacred and artificial, Rerum Novarum reveals the birth of a new visual language — a contemporary prayer suspended between tradition and the future.
Airona Altman
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