Giovanni Maisto is a Venice-based concept artist who experiments with the feminine body in surreal, sci-fi worlds. With the rate of modern technological advancements and the possibilities of bio-engineering, our future is often represented as sterile, unnatural, and devoid of history and meaning—but Maisto’s cyborg bodies are different. Infused with mythology, classical architecture, robotic components, nature imagery, and a touch of psychedelia, they represent a hybridized identity that is organic, mechanized, and sensual, functioning within their environments as fertile landscapes for the human mind to expand and evolve within. Maisto uses the following quote by Leo Tolstoy to help describe the aim of his work: “Art is not a pleasure, a solace or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling.” For Maisto, the “organ” is manifested as the powerful feminine figure in its entirety, illustrated in a way that shifts our perception of the present and the future so that we see the human body and spirit within it.
Images © Giovanni Maisto