“Hydron3 is the name humanity has given to a substance promising eternal youth,” begins the video interview where Giovanni Motta introduces a project that redefines the traditional concept of an exhibition. Is it an happening? An immersive show? A fictitious advertising stunt? The project currently underway at Milan’s Bagni Misteriosi is all these things at once: a sensory and performative experience that transcends conventional art boundaries. At its core, HYDRON³ revolves around this aforementioned imaginary substance, which repackages eternal youth, transforming it into a global product through dynamics reminiscent of contemporary marketing and the spectacle of consumption.
The experience unfolds through an immersive and unsettling journey, where visitors are cast into an environment populated by symbolic figures—werewolf-men and enigmatic characters—creating ambiguous situations balanced between celebration, temptation, and the quest for purity. Giovanni Motta’s sensory voyage is crafted with a distinct visual language, blending pop and the celestial, successfully staging a critical reflection on humanity’s desire for eternity and the commodification of time and nature. A symbolic element representing this obsession with permanence and control over time is a drink made from the mysterious substance, promising everlasting youth. The drink’s formula is ironically revealed after traversing the room of the werewolf-men, immediately following an encounter with a large neon sign declaring, “Time is over, drink eternity.” This declaration of intent guides visitors to the project’s second part.
The gradual fading of vital energy, the fear of aging—Hydron3 addresses all this through the typical iconography of Japanese anime, Giovanni Motta’s primary source of inspiration. The protagonist of the artist’s universe is indeed JonnyBoy, a figure embodying youth as an abstract, unpossessable principle. However, before meeting him, visitors encounter Question Mark, an identity-less man impeccably dressed, his face obscured by a balaclava marked with a white question mark. The exhibition centers on the mystery of a 9-meter-tall ice monolith, discovered by Question Mark during a scientific expedition of dubious authorization. “Anyone else would have seen the mysterious substance as a geological curiosity, something to photograph to say ‘I was there’,” the walls at Bagni Misteriosi proclaim. This symbolizes humanity’s tendency to see even a monolith embedded in a remote location as an opportunity for profit. The act of embedding it causes the mysterious substance to gush forth, and instead of preserving it, Question Mark bottles it and builds an industrial structure around it.
When we finally encounter JonnyBoy, is it perhaps already too late? Visitors find themselves immersed in opulence, at a party celebrating the drink created by the other character in this universe—two facets of a world that “drinks to forget.” Alongside the installations, paintings and painted silhouettes depicting the youth contribute to an aesthetic suspended between nature and pop culture, where saturated colors and recurring symbols evoke a timeless dimension. The boy always maintains the same expression, in which Giovanni Motta identifies three abstractions: “A positive one, wonder; a negative one, which is fear; and finally, a neutral one, astonishment…” It’s as if Motta’s character encapsulates all these emotions, as if in that youthful face, everyone can see a reflection of their own inner self. One can be amazed by a painting, a beautiful building, or a nine-meter-tall ice monolith from which a magical, unknown substance flows.
And by the end of the happening, we all ultimately fall into Question Mark’s trap, enclosed in a foyer transformed into a disco, sipping the drink made from the mysterious substance gushing from the monolith. HYDRON³ thus emerges as a collective ritual, an extreme simulation of the present, where art, entertainment, and social critique intertwine. Through an immediate and hyper-contemporary visual language, Motta explores the contradictions of current society, transforming the aesthetic experience into a space for reflection on the relationship between image, the desire for eternity, and the condition of the present.
