A huge colorful skull in a seventeenth-century church: the exhibition of Okuda San Miguel in Bologna

Entitled The Renaissance Metaverse, the first major solo exhibition in Italy of Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel (Óscar San Miguel Erice; Santander, 1980) is scheduled from Nov. 6 to Dec. 4 in Bologna, in two venues: the former church of San Mattia and the spaces of MAGMA gallery. The exhibition aims to build a bridge between the contemporary and the classical and take the public on a leap between the real and the virtual, a metamorphosis of the contemporary and the ancient. In The Renaissance Metaverse, Okuda San Miguel reflects on the current state of artistic creation as he faces the challenge of digitization, linking this thinking in the two different exhibition spaces that invite the audience to mirror themselves on the historical evolution of the context in which art is accessed.

Knowledge, science and art are important drivers of change and historical evolution. If it was printing, the laws of perspective, trade routes, or banking appearance, today we find ourselves interacting with the Internet, virtual reality, bitcoins, NFTs, in an immersion in the so-called “Metaverse.” Okuda intends to draw on the art of the Renaissance: just as when the classics were taken up to reinterpret history and move toward new paradigms, in the same way the Spanish artist approaches the present from the past.

The Renaissance Metaverse presents paintings, sculptures, and large-scale installations created especially for this exhibition, integrated into the structure of the former St. Matthias Church and the MAGMA gallery space. In this way, the artist wants to reinforce the idea that art adapts to different contexts marked by history, to offer us the opportunity to connect with all trends of thought that lead to evolution. In these new works, Okuda represents some of the icons of Renaissance art with a contemporary language that transports them to new scenarios where they interact with the dreamlike, the spiritual, and the postmodern reality. The Spanish artist appropriates some of his references, placing icons and characters from art history in a virtual world to expose them to an unstoppable process of change in a dual environment, provided by a gallery and a deconsecrated 16th-century church. “I find it very interesting to reflect on the evolution of art within a temple, spaces that for centuries were, along with palaces, the only means of access to art,” Okuda points out.

The exhibition opens at the former St. Matthias Church from Tuesday to Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., at MAGMA Gallery from Wednesday to Saturday from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

A huge colorful skull in a seventeenth-century church: the exhibition of Okuda San Miguel in Bologna

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