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| Open Gambit |
Open Gambit, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
79 x 86 cm
Adamo Macri: Looking Into the Dark Rooms of the Human Mind
Adamo Macri doesn’t approach art from a place of comfort. He was born in Montreal in 1964 and studied at Dawson College, where he immersed himself in commercial art, photography, drawing, fine arts, and art history. Those early foundations didn’t pull him toward one path but opened many. Today, he moves through sculpture, photography, video, painting, and drawing as if each form is simply another door to open. His work feels like an ongoing inquiry into what lives beneath the surface—identity, fear, duality, memory, and the quiet tension between what we think we know and what lies behind it.
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| Cursive Penmanship and the Misfortunes of Virtue |
Macri’s practice is shaped by ideas more than materials. Sculpture remains his central axis, but his larger interest is in transformation. He looks at the self as something fragile, shifting, and layered, always in the process of breaking apart and re-forming. His work doesn’t chase beauty. It doesn’t soften anything. Instead, it holds space for isolation, rebirth, and truth—the uncomfortable kind that doesn’t arrive clean or resolved. When you spend time with his art, you get the feeling that you’re descending inward. He strips away the surface until only the psychological terrain remains.
That inward descent is especially clear in his 2017 photographic work Cursive Penmanship and the Misfortunes of Virtue. It’s a square format—63.5 by 63.5 centimeters—tight, compressed, and visually confined. That square becomes more than a frame. It’s a cell window. A small opening into a closed world. Macri has said he is drawn to darker themes, the kind that carry intrigue and fascination. In this work, he turns directly toward Marquis de Sade and Justine, Sade’s infamous story of suffering, moral conflict, and the collapse of virtue under relentless cruelty.
Macri doesn’t illustrate the narrative. Instead, he distills it down to a psychological state. He speaks of the burden of suffering, the weight of relentless distress, and the persistence of madness pressing inward from all sides. In the photograph, everything feels tight—emotionally, visually, and symbolically. The confinement is part of the point. It speaks to the idea of a mind locked inside its own anguish, without reprieve. It mirrors Sade’s own life: long years in prisons and asylums, writing through the bars, wrestling with his obsessions and philosophies. At the same time, it echoes Justine’s own descent, her repeated attempts to cling to virtue while the world strips it from her.
Macri merges the creator and the created—the author and his tragic heroine—into one troubled presence. In doing so, he captures a complete arc: suffering imposed, suffering internalized, and suffering examined. It becomes a conversation between identity and narrative, between the maker and the thing made. Macri is not interested in retelling Sade’s scandals or dramatizing the violence. Instead, he interprets the psychological structure beneath them: the tension between desire and dread, the conflict between virtue and corruption, the collapse of hope under repeated blows.
To understand the piece, it helps to look briefly at the story that inspired it. Justine follows a young woman who chooses virtue at every turn, only to meet cruelty wherever she goes. Her life becomes a cycle of trust, betrayal, violation, and escape. She seeks shelter in monasteries, homes, and courts, only to face new horrors every time. Meanwhile, her sister Juliette, who embraces vice, flourishes. It’s a narrative built on contradiction—virtue punished, corruption rewarded, and morality turned inside out. The ending is abrupt and merciless: Justine is struck by lightning and dies, while her sister retreats into spiritual reflection.
It’s a brutal story, but Macri is not glorifying its extremes. He’s looking at what it reveals about human nature. He’s exploring the places where moral clarity erodes, where the mind tries to hold itself together under pressure, where identity becomes shadowed by circumstance. In his photograph, the square frame becomes a stage for this collision. It holds the tension between the creator who imagined cruelty and the character who endured it. It also holds the artist himself, who steps into the psychological weight of the narrative and uses it as material.
Macri’s broader practice often circles around these kinds of tensions. He’s drawn to subjects where the boundaries of self feel unstable—moments of transformation, distortion, or emotional fracture. His art is not shy about discomfort. He embraces the darker corners of the human experience, not for shock but for truth. He seems to believe that the mind reveals itself more clearly in struggle than in calm.
Cursive Penmanship and the Misfortunes of Virtue becomes a clear example of what Macri does best. He takes a historical narrative, a philosophical conflict, a psychological burden, and compresses them into one distilled image. It’s a work about suffering, but it’s also about identity—how it forms, how it breaks, how it absorbs the weight of experience. He brings the viewer into a space that is uneasy, quiet, and charged with tension. And in that tension, he finds something honest.
Macri’s art avoids easy conclusions. Instead, it asks you to sit with the darker parts of existence without looking away. In that sense, his work is less about the stories he references and more about the psychological truths he uncovers along the way.
Christmas Editorial Pick
Adamo Macri: Looking Into the Dark Rooms of the Human Mind
Published December 7, 2025
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"Looking at this particular portrait, and again after reading this intriguing analysis of it, I remember Foucault's "Madness and Civilization," which includes a section on de Sade to whom he gives importance (as French intellectuals often do, or did). The incarceration of the insane and the eccentric (which included much and many in the definition of the times), and the notion that reason and by extension virtue as being limiting and in some sense destructive should or must be overturned by a range of violence are still subjects for exploration, to which your portrait contributes. In his prison cell, de Sade embodied, at least fantasized much, according to the argument. But, despite having read it, I am not terribly familiar with "Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique." Congratulations, Adamo. This is very nice, indeed."
~ Kenneth Radu (Canadian writer)
Adamo Macri delves into identity, contamination, the equilibrium of nature, often blurring the lines between the artist and artwork to convey carefully constructed narratives. Every project contributes to a broader anthology of tales, highlighting Macri’s development as an artist and storyteller.
Exclusive Artist Feature
Adamo Macri: Into the Hidden Depths
Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1964, Adamo Macri is a multimedia artist whose creative scope stretches beyond convention. A graduate of Dawson College, his studies in commercial art, graphic design, photography, art history, and fine arts gave him a foundation that seamlessly merges technique and intuition. Though sculpture anchors much of his artistic identity, his practice expands into photography, video, painting, and drawing—each medium an exploration of transformation, perception, and the fragile tension between illusion and truth. Macri’s work is not concerned with comfort or surface beauty; instead, it searches the interior landscapes of experience. His art feels like a descent into consciousness, stripping away the visible to reveal what stirs beneath. Isolation, renewal, and duality echo through his visual language, where beauty often resides in unease and discovery begins where certainty ends.
Mariana Trench (2025)
Medium: Photography
Size: 76 x 84 cm
In Mariana Trench, Macri ventures into one of Earth’s most haunting frontiers—the deepest oceanic abyss known to humankind. Stretching nearly eleven kilometers beneath the surface of the Pacific, the trench becomes a metaphor for the psyche itself—dark, pressurized, and uncharted. Through photography, Macri turns this natural phenomenon into an inward excavation. His vision imagines ghostly lifeforms—bioluminescent hybrids and the mysterious “Abyssalisian sapiens”—emerging in places untouched by light. These beings, luminous and alien, reflect life’s persistence under impossible conditions.
The work, though mythic, is rooted in personal truth. Macri has spoken openly about his phobias—claustrophobia, fear of heights, deep water, and confinement. In Mariana Trench, these fears are not hidden; they’re transformed. The ocean becomes a metaphor for what the mind conceals—its unspoken pressures and the dissolution of identity under emotional weight. What begins as a geological image expands into a portrait of internal struggle and survival.
A quiet ecological message also runs through the piece. Macri notes that even the trench—Earth’s remotest sanctuary—bears human scars: a discarded plastic bag lies nearly 11,000 meters deep, a symbol of both human reach and irresponsibility. The image balances awe with lamentation. Nature’s endurance contrasts sharply with human neglect, its depths turned into both cathedral and grave.
Macri’s inclusion of Queen Mariana of Austria and Velázquez’s portrait of her adds an unexpected layer. The disciplined grandeur of the queen’s image collides with the primal energy of the imagined sea creature. One represents control and formality; the other, evolution and survival. His creature, fluid and genderless, transcends boundaries, existing as pure adaptation—a reflection of nature’s resilience and the artist’s fascination with transformation.
Ultimately, Mariana Trench is less about the sea than about perception. It questions where “reality” ends and imagination begins. For Macri, those lines blur—what we fear, invent, or dream might be truer than what we claim to know. The photograph becomes a meditation on endurance and perception, on beauty discovered where light refuses to reach.
Adieu Henriette (2025)
Medium: Photography
Size: 76 x 84 cm
Where Mariana Trench delves into the abyss, Adieu Henriette lingers on emotional departure. Inspired by Giacomo Casanova’s brief but consuming affair with a woman named Henriette, Macri reinterprets the story not through seduction but separation. Henriette—an educated, independent woman fleeing an oppressive marriage—embodied autonomy in an era that denied it. When she left Casanova, she shattered his illusion of control. Her exit, rather than his conquest, becomes the emotional nucleus of the piece.
Macri transforms this historical anecdote into a study of loss and realization. Adieu Henriette captures the quiet ache that follows an ending—the still space between attachment and release. The photograph’s subdued tones and restrained composition suggest not despair, but reflection. It is heartbreak distilled into calm awareness. Through it, Macri explores love as both confinement and liberation—how emotional bonds can both elevate and imprison.
Casanova’s later imprisonment under “The Leads” in Venice echoes symbolically through the image. His literal captivity mirrors the emotional imprisonment that follows love’s departure. In Adieu Henriette, the artist suggests that freedom often begins with loss, that parting can be its own form of clarity.
Suspended between time and memory, the photograph carries a quiet grace. It resists melodrama; its strength lies in what remains unspoken. Love, for Macri, is not permanent—it is a continuum of transformations. What begins in passion ends in understanding. The work captures that moment when grief softens into acceptance, when the heart realizes that even loss has meaning.
Together, Mariana Trench and Adieu Henriette trace two sides of the same descent—the plunge into darkness and the release from attachment. Adamo Macri moves seamlessly between the external and the internal, between the ocean’s abyss and the mind’s hidden chambers. His art does not seek comfort; it seeks truth. And within that truth—raw, quiet, and profound—he finds a strange kind of light.
Adamo Macri featured in the Art Muse Express publication.
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| Art Muse Express |
Adamo Macri was born in Montreal in 1964 and studied a wide mix of disciplines at Dawson College— commercial art, photography, graphic design, art history, and fine arts. It shows. His work never sits comfortably in one category. Though he's often grouped with sculptors, that only scratches the surface. He works in multiple mediums— photography, drawing, video, painting— and tends to blur the lines between them. His approach is idea-first. What holds it all together is his fixation on meaning: how a single word or image can carry history, slang, and myth, all at once.
Art Muse Express
Publisher: Art Muse Express
2025 - Hardcover
Publisher: Art Muse Express
2025 - Hardcover
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| Mariana Trench |
The artwork Mariana Trench is included in the official catalog, having received the International Prize: Artists on the French Riviera award at an event in the Musée National du Sport, Nice France. It is also featured in the Master Artists to Collect Artbook Issue 4 2025 publication.
Mariana Trench is a key focus in the article Adamo Macri: Into the Hidden Depths by Art Today.
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| International Prize: Artists on the French Riviera |
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| Musée National du Sport, Nice France |
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| Master Artists to Collect Artbook Issue 4 2025 |
International Prize: Artists on the French Riviera
Publisher: Fondazione Effetto Arte
2025 - Paperback
Publisher: Fondazione Effetto Arte
2025 - Paperback
Master Artists to Collect Artbook Issue 4 2025
Publisher: Fondazione Effetto Arte
2025 - Paperback
Publisher: Fondazione Effetto Arte
2025 - Paperback
Mariana Trench, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
76 x 84 cm
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
76 x 84 cm
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| Adieu Henriette |
The artwork Adieu Henriette is included in the official catalog, having received The New Protagonists of Contemporary Art 2025 award at an event in Saint Paul de Vence, France.
Adieu Henriette is a key focus in the article Adamo Macri: Into the Hidden Depths by Art Today.
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| The New Protagonists of Contemporary Art 2025 |
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| Saint Paul de Vence, France |
“Adamo, Adieu Henriette est une œuvre extraordinaire. Ce qui me frappe le plus, c’est le dialogue fluide que tu as créé entre le portrait classique et l’identité contemporaine. L’austérité de la pose, associée aux volants dramatiques et aux détails dorés, est magnifiquement contrebalancée par la modernité des lunettes de soleil. C’est comme si le passé et le présent se figeaient dans un même cadre, chacun enrichissant l’autre. Le contraste entre le costume du XVIIIe siècle et cette touche contemporaine donne à l’œuvre une véritable vitalité, comme une conversation à travers le temps. Une pièce profondément réfléchie, et pleinement digne de sa place dans le catalogue de Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Bravo.”
~ Rosie S. (Administrative Management, Vanier College)
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"You are already a living Icon."
~ Michael K Waterman (Multi-media artist, New York, Savannah Georgia)
The New Protagonists of Contemporary Art 2025
Publisher: Fondazione Effetto Arte
2025 - Paperback
Adieu Henriette, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
76 x 84 cm
Worn Out: Adamo Macri’s Prêt à Porter
by Kenneth Radu
I
The artist Adamo Macri no sooner disposes of one head then he grows another like the many-headed hydra, so when focussing on one or two portraits and building responses (I think building is the right word here), we are always aware that new portraits may well undercut or challenge our views of previous ones, for his portraits are often visual and symbolic narratives, and the story or stories, can change from one portrait to the next. That is their excitement; that is their genius.
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| Prêt à Porter |
As I studied Adamo Macri’s intriguing portrait Prêt à Porter and despite the title with its sartorial implications, I also thought of Caravaggio’s painting David with the Head of Goliath, and its depiction of the physically, psychologically intense conflict between turmoil and calm, darkness and light, sin and redemption. The fact that Caravaggio, himself a murderer, produced this extraordinary work during the last year of his life, painting himself as the much older Goliath and arguably as the young David, surely suggests an artist struggling with criminal passions and searching the depths of his being for a way out of his personal maelstrom. In a sense, David decapitates the worse part of him to allow virtue to emerge victorious and defeat the allure of degeneracy. This statement leads me again to look at Macri’s glinting, metallic portrait, Vice Not Virtue, with a stylized snake necklace slithering around his neck, somewhat reminiscent of the serpent the infant Jesus with assistance from his mother steps upon in Caravaggio’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri).
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| David with the Head of Goliath (Caravaggio) |
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| Vice Not Virtue |
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| Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Caravaggio) |
I don’t know what personal demons Macri the man is struggling with, but I do believe Prêt à Porter is a portrait of intense psychological, perhaps even spiritual, combat. Even though like Caravaggio Macri uses his own face, in this portrait he covers it almost totally by dramatic, architectural eyewear, obscuring the eyes, and of course eyewear is a consistent motif in Macri’s oeuvre. Its dramatic presence here forces viewers to pay attention to other elements of the portrait, and to shift attention from purely biographical speculations about the artist and his travails to larger, dare I say, universal considerations.
Why is this Macri portrait called Prêt à Porter? Viewers have become aware of the subtlety in Macri’s titles, signposts, or directional words, but not necessarily absolute interpretations. Ready to wear, having worn, worn out: the progression seems inevitable. Used. Disposable. Is the title pointing to clothes or a person? Which is the commodity: the person or the fashion? Given the great black shield of the eyewear, identity disappears, regardless of who the man behind them seems to be. But that simply raises more questions. Who is the man? What is he disguising or hiding? What was his nature or proclivities in the past to account for how he appears now? What the man has left behind, what he once was and no longer is, how deeply buried his original identity: all are aspects not so much submerged as washed away, a watery metaphor to which I shall return.
Yes, of course, the portrait by its very title raises questions about high fashion and disposability, the use of style as a form of politics and class consciousness. We applaud, or bow as if yoked under the arbitrariness and whimsy of designs. Questions of ethics surrounding the fickleness and volatility of high fashion, with most of us wearing standardized, ready-made clothes influenced by haute couture, lead to notions of dispensability and irrelevance, one person as interchangeable with another as clothes on a hanger. Is it an illusion of individual expression or subtle form of general oppression?
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| Night (series) |
The devil may wear Prada but I suspect he/she/they prefers down and dirty action to this year’s winter line, concupiscence to clothing, a preference implied in Macri’s strong, black and white portraits of a somewhat overused man. Let me be fanciful here and argue that Prêt à Porter is conceivably the same character who appears in the series of erotically charged, “bad boy” portraits of a devil-may-care, hedonistic rebel in Night Call, After Hours, Late Shift, and Runaway Circuit. Here is a man who looks as if he’s played too many a dangerous game. Having exhausted the nefarious possibilities, or fucked to the point of indifference, in Prêt à Porter he now remains somewhat worn out, worn down, and living with the detritus of his actions, clothed in black, a colour not associated with joy. The background is indistinct, grey with a barely perceptible pattern. That being said, there’s an element of bravado in these pictures, a kind of movie star pose about what a tough guy might look like. With a toss of the head and forward thrusting chin, the man also seems to be daring us, come at me, bro, certainly not running away from a fright, as Caravaggio ran away from the scene of his crime. Collectively, this series, despite the apparent pugnacity, is erotically charged. I still get the feeling, however, of “after the fact” or “after the ball,” and past actions not worth the effort. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 is particularly apt here:
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight:
Macri’s man is left drained, dissatisfied, spiritually panic-stricken, perhaps like the miscreant and murderer Caravaggio, who painted the glorious canvas, The Seven Acts of Mercy, also known as the Misericordia, towards the end of his difficult life, perhaps murder weighing heavily on his conscience, and seeking human, even divine succour. As if in painting, as in Macri’s portraits, a form of salvation can be found through art. Macri’s man in Prêt à Porter may not have severed a head (how are we to know?), or otherwise attempted to cut out the insalubrious parts of his being, but he’s clearly worn out, and wearing a mournful robe like a sackcloth. And I am reminded that biblically speaking a sackcloth was no fine silken garment, but one woven out of coarse animal hair. I cannot help but feel that the man has much to answer for. As Isaiah laments, “woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”
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| The Seven Acts of Mercy (Caravaggio) |
II
For a work whose title draws attention to attire, it’s curious that we see very little of the actual clothes the figure is wearing, except for the black colour. Massively black, as black as anything in Caravaggio, call it tenebrism if you wish, but it’s not high fashion since it obliterates distinctive styles or elements of haute couture. I suspect that we may pay too much attention to the literal meaning of titles, a risky venture in art as allusively charged as many of Macri portraits are. The title of Prêt à Porter points to several directions, and much is left to the viewer’s imagination as to its meaning, aside from the surface meaning, the same viewer has who has grown alert to the irony, self-mockery, layered and/or symbolic significance of Macri’s titles. Made to measure, or ready to wear, one size fits all, new or old: the condition of fabric or the condition of mind, or, if one is religiously inclined, condition of the soul. I use the word religion advisedly, especially since the man in Macri’s portrait has an aura of the Man of Sorrows.
A phrase usually associated with the crucified Christ, originating, I believe, in Byzantine Christian art depicting Jesus after he has been taken down from the cross. Many artists have been inspired by such a figure. Durer’s drawing of that title comes to mind immediately, and a curiously gentle painting by Murillo, as well as Botticelli’s extraordinary Christ figure in his canvas bearing the title The Man of Sorrows. The halo in Botticelli’s work consists of miniature angels, each holding a tool required for construction of the cross and the actual crucifixion: things like a ladder, nails, spear. Forgive me if I am looking for parallels where none exist, but I fancy the spikes sticking theatrically out of the man’s eyewear in Macri’s Vice Not Virtue indicate not only menace and potential injury, but also a perverse, comical halo poking out of the frame of blue-tinted eyewear, blue so notably associated with divinity in religious art: but here, a demon not an angel. I’m not arguing for anything Christ-like in Prêt à Porter, but the lines in this particular composition contribute to the impression of a man sunk in psychic pain and melancholy: not a much-abused saviour of the world or a runway model, but someone burdened with private pain and sorrows that we can all feel. One may consider the nefarious role fashion plays in our lives, but from another angle the portrait is also depicting something entirely different. Indeed, the lines in Prêt à Porter are remarkable, created by the lengths of hair strands and their careful arrangement.
As I look at and think about these lines, I also study Ensor’s grotesque image of misery in his painting The Man of Sorrows. Misery is dramatized by a complicated series of rusty-orange, blood imbued lines running down his head, face and chin, the crown of thorns etched in by more lines. Deep furrows and ridges sink in his face, as if it’s been gouged by horror, which accounts for dead-looking eyes and a mouth partially opened like a tomb’s door. The strokes of blue pigment throughout and a choker around his neck only intensify the impressions: not a pretty picture, but crucifixions aren’t meant to be pretty, divine or not. Yes, it’s a depiction of the crucified Christ, but it’s also a personification of individual depression and despair.
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| The Man of Sorrows (James Ensor) |
Let me not, however, slip into the slough of despond and writhe in misfortune lest my face become furrowed with lines of despair. And yet, the hair in Macri’s portrait hangs limp, wet, resting against or tracing the skin like the intricate patterns of Hindu body art, known as mehindi. Macri is adept and careful when arranging hair and shadows in his art. The patterns on the skin, for example, in the priestly portrait Orgone Box convey an aura of calm and intensity. In Prêt à Porter the lines of hair suggest scarring, and again I am reminded that Caravaggio’s face was mutilated and left scarred by a vicious knife attack, a not uncommon form of revenge in Italy at the time, known as sfregio. Macri’s portrait doesn’t induce feelings of wonder and joy, nor, despite its title, does it really remind me of the politics of high fashion or shopping for a standardized new shirt. It arouses powerful feelings nonetheless. Unlike Ensor’s grotesque portrait, pulsing with horror, a sense of exhaustion hangs over Macri’s work, the body having become a hanger not for garments off the rack, but for the clothing of collapse, the anonymity of the face not the impassive visage of the model, but a mask of misery.
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| Orgone Box |
The man in Prêt à Porter appears as if he has been immersed in and then pulled out of water. How often do we hear the expressions drown our sorrows or drowning in sorrow? Saturation and separation, a kind of symbolic deliquescence, as if whatever is hidden behind the eyewear is changing the man to liquid, a form of drowning his sorrows and disappearing, sharing perhaps Hamlet’s intense melancholy: Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself unto a dew. Drowned in sorrow or sorrows drowned. Water is death and water is life: as so often expressed in various symbolic ways in many cultures through the ages: once immersed with disfiguring pain of one kind or another, a person may be washed clean, rise transformed and renewed, as calm and coherent as the man depicted in Citing A Medium. And one notes the similarity of eyewear in the two portraits.
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| Citing A Medium |
So, if Caravaggio is depicting his own turmoil in the David and Goliath painting, symbolically cutting away the rotten part of him, his somewhat loaded painting of The Seven Acts of Mercy may well be a plea for human compassion and divine forgiveness for a terrible crime. One of the acts of mercy depicted in the painting is clothing the naked and impoverished. Yes, Macri’s Prêt à Porter touches upon fashion and disposability, but it also carries the viewer (porter) into the hidden depths of an agonized soul.
Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has been nominated for a Governor General’s award and twice received the Quebec Writers’ Federation prize for best English-language fiction. He also has written extensively for the online cultural magazine, Salon .II. He has recently completed the manuscript of a new novel, which is now undergoing revisions.
Worn Out: Adamo Macri’s Prêt à Porter
Essay by Kenneth Radu - 2025
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“Kenneth Radu’s reading of Prêt à Porter is impressive in its scope and depth. His associations with Caravaggio, fashion, and spiritual combat illuminate many possible layers in Adamo Macri’s portrait. I especially appreciated how he drew attention to the tension between concealment and revelation, the eyewear obscuring the face yet forcing us to look more carefully at other elements, like the lines of hair, textures, and the emotional weight that hangs over the portrait.
At the same time, I think what makes your, Adamo’s work so compelling is precisely its openness to these wide-ranging interpretations. Where Kenneth sees echoes of Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath and the “Man of Sorrows” tradition, I might see something slightly different…a meditation not only on exhaustion and collapse but also on transformation. The title Prêt à Porter might carry irony, as Kenneth notes, but for me it also suggests that identity itself is something we “wear” — something we can adopt, discard, or repurpose, much like clothing.
Rather than a man “worn out,” I also see the possibility of renewal in this work. The watery, limp hair Kenneth describes can feel suffocating, yes, but it can also suggest immersion, cleansing, and the potential for emerging into another state. If Caravaggio’s figures wrestled with sin and redemption, perhaps Adamo’s figures wrestle with the ongoing process of self-construction in a world that often reduces individuality to commodity.
What Radu’s essay demonstrates beautifully is that Macri’s portraits demand sustained attention, they invite us to bring our own histories, references, and emotions to them. His essay deepens the conversation, but I think the power of Adamo’s work is that it resists being fixed into one meaning: it continues to shift, provoke, and unsettle, even after such a rigorous interpretation.”
~ Rosie S. (Administrative Management, Vanier College)
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| Histrionic Sitter |
"Minimalism indeed, visual presentation with minimum help, very talented!"
~ Ida Tomshinsky (International Fine Arts College, Library Director Florida National University)
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"Blade Runner just jumped into my head when I saw this, but the runner is resting and planning the next move. It may have been there in your subconscious; it's my favourite place of perception."
~ John Felice Ceprano (Ottawa rock sculptor, painter)
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"Post apocalyptic cyber sexy realness. Perfect simple and delivers the message with minimalness. Perfect. But naturally. Adamo Macri you know by now that “I get you.“ It is my soul which speaks of Art as it has been since its creation.. Millennia ago."
~ Michael K Waterman (Multi-media artist, New York, Savannah Georgia)
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"You are indeed a very unique individual that evolves, stay blessed and keep creating awesomeness."
~ Tya Gem (Metamorphosis Art Gallery, Taiping Malaysia)
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“You look Hot Adamo.”
~ Anna Calabrese (English Montreal School Board)
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“Very powerful and enigmatic. Wow.”
~ John Devlin (Visual artist, University of Nova Scotia)
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“What’s more than love? This.”
~ Michael McQuary (Artist/Actor at Entertainment Industry, MTV)
Histrionic Sitter, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
71 x 84 cm
Adamo Macri: Reframing the Narrative of Sculpture
Showcase My Art
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| Triffid II |
Adamo Macri is a Montreal-based contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, photography, painting, video, and drawing. Known for weaving together complex themes of identity, contamination, and the staging of nature, his work resists traditional boundaries. Instead of treating sculpture as a static object, Macri approaches it as an occurrence, a moment in time that resonates as much through its process as through its form. This perspective allows him to transform not only materials but also himself, becoming part of the narrative and blurring the line between creator and creation.
Macri’s work has earned him international recognition and acclaim. He is a recipient of The International Prize Leonardo Da Vinci and The Phoenix International Prize for the Arts. His pieces have been featured in the respected Contemporary Celebrity Masters publications, affirming his position as a leading figure in the global contemporary art dialogue. One of his most notable works, Nevermore, was chosen for inclusion in the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea, a prestigious publication supported by the Patron of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Language of Transformation
Central to Macri’s artistic philosophy is the idea of transformation. His works often incorporate his own physical being, either directly or symbolically, merging the artist with the object. In this way, he becomes part of the story the artwork tells, presenting himself as both subject and medium. The result is an anthology-like body of work: layered, multifaceted, and rich with allegory.
For Macri, sculpture does not simply occupy space; it stages experiences. Each piece acts as a living narrative, capturing fleeting moments that reflect broader questions about human existence, the environment, and the evolution of identity. His practice draws attention to the intersections where natural and artificial, permanent and temporary, physical and psychological meet.
Triffid II: The Puppet and the Presence
Among Macri’s compelling works is Triffid II, a hand puppet rendered in stark black and white. At first glance, the piece evokes simplicity, but beneath its surface lies a profound meditation on control, performance, and the human condition.
Puppets carry a symbolic weight that transcends their physical form. They represent both animation and subjugation, freedom and constraint. In Triffid II, Macri uses the puppet as a metaphor for the tension between autonomy and manipulation, an exploration of how identity can be staged, altered, or even performed for an unseen audience. The monochromatic palette underscores this dichotomy, reducing the object to its essential contrasts, much like identity itself, which is often shaped by binary perceptions of self and other.
The choice of mixed media enhances the layered quality of the piece, inviting viewers to consider not just the physical material but also the conceptual substance. By situating Triffid II within his broader exploration of sculpture as an “occurrence,” Macri turns what might otherwise be dismissed as a simple object into an active participant in a narrative about control, fragility, and existence.
Identity and Contamination
One of Macri’s enduring thematic concerns is the idea of contamination not simply in a biological or environmental sense, but as a metaphor for cultural and psychological exchange. Contamination here suggests the inevitable merging of influences that shape identity, art, and society.
In Triffid II, contamination is evident in the way multiple symbolic registers overlap: the puppet as a childlike plaything, as a theatrical tool, as an object of control, and as a metaphor for manipulated identity. The work embodies the idea that identity is never pure or singular but rather a constant negotiation between external influence and internal resistance.
This lens of contamination also ties back to Macri’s larger body of work, where sculpture is not simply an isolated creation but a happening, a point of convergence between artist, object, and viewer.
A Carefully Curated Anthology of Tales
Viewed collectively, Macri’s oeuvre resembles a meticulously assembled anthology. Each work contributes a distinct narrative, yet together they form a coherent exploration of what it means to exist, to perform, and to be perceived. His art does not impose answers but instead stages encounters, encouraging audiences to consider their own roles in the unfolding stories.
Through sculpture, photography, painting, and other media, he creates portals into themes that are universal yet deeply personal. The stories embedded in his works are not simply his own; they echo broader human experiences, our anxieties, our aspirations, and our search for meaning.
International Recognition and Influence
Macri’s accolades reflect not only the technical mastery of his craft but also the intellectual rigor of his artistic approach. The recognition from international institutions affirms the relevance of his themes in today’s global art discourse. His ability to merge philosophical inquiry with visual impact situates him as a thinker as much as a maker, someone who continually pushes the boundaries of what sculpture and contemporary art can be.
The inclusion of Nevermore in the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea underscores this point. The piece, like Triffid II, embodies Macri’s commitment to framing art as a narrative occurrence, bridging the intimate and the monumental.
Conclusion: The Puppet as Mirror
With Triffid II, Adamo Macri distills many of the ideas that have come to define his practice. The puppet becomes a mirror for the complexities of identity, control, and contamination, while the stark black-and-white palette reinforces its symbolic resonance. It is both object and occurrence, sculpture and performance.
Macri’s artistry lies in his ability to take familiar forms and reframe them in ways that challenge assumptions. By transforming the act of creation into a narrative event, he invites audiences not merely to look but to participate in the unfolding story. In doing so, he secures his place as one of contemporary art’s most thought-provoking voices, an artist whose work reminds us that sculpture is not static, but alive with the power of transformation.
Adamo Macri: Reframing the Narrative of Sculpture
Published August 31, 2025
Showcase My Art by Caroline Margaret
Triffid II (hand puppet, black/white), 2017
Sculpture: Mixed media
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| Prêt à Porter |
Prêt à Porter is featured in the article Editorial Pick: Adamo Macri Peels Back the Surface by ARToday.net
"The photo isn’t about fashion per se—it’s about identity and packaging. It’s about how humans, like garments, are sometimes presented as finished products, ready to be consumed by others. The body becomes merchandise. Identity becomes a label. The viewer becomes a shopper."
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"Dripping. In the skin. Like a weave sewn into skin, merging line and form. Lovely, and as hair grows from skin, skin is scarred by it. It's absence leaves a pattern and form. And a story. Prêt à Porter brings the passion from the heart and then layers it nakedly upon the skin, like a transparent coating of collected memoirs. Intriguing article, yet it could have gone deeper into the skin.. ben fatto."
~ John Felice Ceprano (Ottawa rock sculptor, painter)
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“Liquid vision.”
~ Michael McQuary (Artist/Actor at Entertainment Industry, MTV)
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“Melting from the heat. A sultry walk in the rain.”
~ Theresa Pope Church (American scientist)
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“In bringing these influences on light, hopefully then, we will avoid being blindsided by them and consciously incorporate an understanding of their impact. Sometimes, we use the heart to feel and see.”
~ Ida Tomshinsky (International Fine Arts College, Library Director Florida National University)
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“Enigmatic, vaguely menacing.”
~ Denis Gaubert (Manager at The Real Colonel, Louisiana State University Law Center)
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“Great work Adamo, fashion and style, nice one.”
~ Irie San (Digital creator, Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design Marseille Méditerranée)
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"I can't help but wonder, do you have favourite characters, alter egos, the lines flow in this, you capture the moment, and ooze emotion of the moment. Très bon."
~ Judith Desrosiers Malaney (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Researcher, Wallasey UK)
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"You are already a living Icon."
~ Michael K Waterman (Multi-media artist, New York, Savannah Georgia)
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Prêt à Porter, 2025
Photography: Chromogenic C-print
41 x 46 x 3 cm
ARToday.net
Adamo Macri is a Montreal-born multimedia artist who has spent decades working at the crossroads of discipline, culture, and meaning. Born in 1964, he studied at Dawson College, where his foundation was laid in commercial art, photography, graphic design, art history, and fine arts. That breadth of training still shows. Macri is often referred to as a sculptor, but he resists easy categorization. His practice stretches across photography, video, drawing, painting, and installation. What connects it all is a need to push past the surface. Macri isn’t interested in producing beautiful things for their own sake. His work is conceptual, often layered with social commentary, and unafraid to play with irony. He mines his lived experience and cultural observations to create pieces that feel both highly personal and universally relevant.
One such work is Prêt à Porter (2025), a photographic piece that’s as subtle as it is sharp.
At first glance, Prêt à Porter appears clean and polished. It’s a photograph, 41 by 46 centimeters, visually restrained in a way that recalls high fashion advertising. But the more you sit with it, the more you realize it’s not selling anything. If anything, it’s questioning the machinery of what has already been sold.
The title—Prêt à Porter—translates directly to “ready to wear,” a term rooted in the fashion industry. It refers to clothing that is mass-produced and sold in standardized sizes, unlike haute couture, which is custom-made for individual clients. In a way, prêt-à-porter clothing stands as a symbol of accessibility. Designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin helped bring this concept into mainstream consciousness in the mid-20th century, offering luxury fashion to a broader audience than couture ever could. But with that accessibility came something else—standardization, uniformity, and the quiet pressure to conform.
Macri’s work turns this idea inside out. The photo isn’t about fashion per se—it’s about identity and packaging. It’s about how humans, like garments, are sometimes presented as finished products, ready to be consumed by others. The body becomes merchandise. Identity becomes a label. The viewer becomes a shopper.
In this context, the work takes on a sculptural tone. Even though it’s a still photograph, it speaks in layers and materials, echoing Macri’s background in three-dimensional form. The textures in the image—fabric, flesh, perhaps even artificial elements—blur together. They don’t just clothe the subject; they cloak it. The surface is curated. The message is about the surface itself.
Macri often uses irony in his work, and here, the irony is sharp. Prêt à Porter presents something polished and consumer-ready, but underneath is a commentary on disposability. In the fashion world, ready-to-wear is efficient, scalable, and affordable. But what happens when that same mindset is applied to people? What happens when individuality is edited out in favor of palatability?
There’s also something haunting in the piece. You sense absence—of spirit, of voice, of choice. The model in the frame (if there is one) is more object than subject. That ambiguity feels intentional. Macri isn’t handing the viewer an easy interpretation. Instead, he’s asking us to reckon with how culture shapes and flattens identity. In a world obsessed with branding and mass appeal, Prêt à Porter asks: who gets to wear what, and who gets worn out?
Macri’s broader body of work often operates in this same mode—elegant but unsettling, formal but deeply conceptual. He draws on commercial aesthetics only to critique them. There’s a knowingness in his images that comes from someone who understands both how to build an image and how to deconstruct it. That balance is what gives his work weight. It’s not just about aesthetics or politics—it’s about where those two things collide.
What Prêt à Porter does so well is show that the line between art and product, identity and image, isn’t as clear as we might think. In our world of curated feeds, mass branding, and streamlined personas, Macri’s photograph is both mirror and provocation. It asks us to pause, peel back the label, and see what’s underneath—not just in the photo, but in ourselves.
Editorial Pick: Adamo Macri Peels Back the Surface
Published July 25, 2025
Adamo Macri: Pushing Language Through the Lens
Adamo Macri was born in Montreal in 1964 and studied a wide mix of disciplines at Dawson College—commercial art, photography, graphic design, art history, and fine arts. It shows. His work never sits comfortably in one category. Though he’s often grouped with sculptors, that only scratches the surface. He works in multiple mediums—photography, drawing, video, painting—and tends to blur the lines between them. His approach is idea-first. What holds it all together is his fixation on meaning: how a single word or image can carry history, slang, and myth, all at once.
Macri’s photographs are tightly composed, often with a central figure posed like a statue. But the titles unravel things. That’s where the trouble starts. A simple phrase will suddenly split open into double meanings and hidden references. Each piece is an image, yes—but also a puzzle, a trigger, or a quiet joke.
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| Male Head with Bugle |
Male Head with Bugle (2024)
Photography, 84 x 89 cm
The image gives you what the title promises: a male figure, a bugle. But the surface is only a setup. “Bugle” isn’t just an instrument. It’s also slang—for a nose, for cocaine, for making noise. In military contexts, the bugle means commands and signals. On the street, it points to indulgence, maybe even chaos.
The photo itself doesn’t give away much. The man’s expression is neutral. Classical. Formal. But the title tilts the entire meaning. Is this a tribute to order or a nod to disorder? Is the figure blowing the horn or has something just blown through him? Macri turns a simple portrait into a collision of narratives—ceremony, slang, addiction, and authority. You feel the image settle into place while the title keeps slipping sideways. Kenneth Radu’s essay “Tricky Titles” calls attention to Macri’s way of dragging words into new contexts. That’s on full display here. The image stays still, but everything else moves.
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| Aerosol |
Aerosol (2024)
Photography, 84 x 89 cm
Another portrait, but this one feels more diffuse—by design. “Aerosol” carries multiple associations. It’s a technical term for a substance released into the air. It’s cosmetic. It’s environmental. And in street culture, it means spray paint—graffiti. That tension between visibility and invisibility runs right through the piece.
The figure in the photo is posed, deliberate, like the others. But the title makes you think about dispersion, about what hangs in the air. Graffiti artists like Banksy made aerosol into something public, but also something fleeting. The piece plays with that balance: control vs. chaos, permanence vs. drift.
There’s no can in sight. No obvious message on a wall. But the idea is present. The photograph is crisp, clean, contained. Yet the word “aerosol” pulls you into something harder to contain—spray, rebellion, maybe even contamination. Again, Macri uses the title like a propellant. It sends your interpretation in new directions, fast.
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| Pinus Attis |
Pinus Attis (2013)
Photography, 41 x 48 cm
This one dives straight into myth. Attis was a Phrygian god tied to the rhythms of nature. His story ends in self-castration and transformation into a pine tree—a symbol of rebirth. The title Pinus Attis fuses the Latin name for pine with the god’s own. That fusion sets the tone.
In the image, the subject is quiet. Nothing dramatic, no explicit narrative. But there’s weight in the stillness. If you know Attis’s story, you might sense that moment right before—or after—the cut. The pine tree becomes more than just a tree. It’s a container of pain, renewal, ritual. You begin to read the image as sacred, even though it never announces itself that way.
Macri doesn’t spell anything out. He lets the reference sit in the background, like a hum. But the myth still seeps through. The body in the frame is both person and symbol—tied to something older, seasonal, maybe even eternal.
In all three works, Macri keeps his grip on form. The compositions are spare, almost restrained. But the meanings churn underneath. His titles are doing heavy lifting, dragging the viewer into places they didn’t expect to go. These aren’t decorative portraits. They’re tools, traps, and provocations.
Macri seems less interested in telling a story than in bending one. He invites the viewer to stumble, rethink, get caught in a double meaning. Each image is a quiet surface layered over something louder—language, myth, slang, decay. That’s the tension he’s always working with. And that’s what makes the work keep echoing, long after you’ve looked away.