Coded Palette

Coded Palette is featured in an Artworld Daily interview - Exploring Identity Through Art: The Multifaceted World of Adamo Macri.

“His art is a continuous dance between mediums, each contributing to a larger, more complex narrative. Themes of identity, character, and environment drive his work, and his creative process embodies both intellectual rigor and emotional exploration.” ~ Artworld Daily

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"Colour symbolism, of course, is present in any culture, and in the West white is most often associated with virtue, purity and innocence; or, if one wishes to move into negative associations, white also signifies absence, loss of vitality, sickness, even death and ghostliness. The head in Macri's Coded Palette, however, pushes outward, a shock of symbolically green hair bursting out and proclaiming: here is life, here is vitality, here is extroversion, her is joy. Except it’s unreal, isn’t it? The image of Christ with a crown of thorns on the jacket combined with the clownish spots on the cheeks, and the evident artificiality of the hair, all render this portrait ambiguous. The bright whiteness may be cover-up for, oh, I don’t know, something insidious, unsavoury, the way clowns for all their humour and harmless slapstick can actually terrify rather than amuse young children and make some adults apprehensive. Like Stephen King’s clown, Pennywise. The lack of expression in the Macri portrait, however, prevents this work from being overtly or implicitly malevolent, except it’s so made-up of contradictory elements that I can’t quite feel comfortable in its presence. It’s absurd, it’s fun, it’s odd, it’s off-putting, and it’s fascinating. Since facial expression is a form of predetermination, Macri takes pains to avoid it, thereby rendering his works richer in implication, narratively more complex and open to viewers’ own understanding of what they see."

“Macri’s portrait, however, raises the question: is Coded Palette devotional or satirical? And I am reminded that humour, however dark, like religion and sex, can be a response to death and the absurdities of various religious practices.”


Coded Palette, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
43 x 56 x 3 cm