Giovanni Motta's HYDRON³ Exhibition Transforms Milan's Bagni Misteriosi

Italian digital artist Giovanni Motta (born 1971 in Verona) presents his exhibition 'HYDRON³ – Time is over. Drink eternity' at the Bagni Misteriosi of the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan. The event runs from March 26 to April 12, 2026, lasting only two weeks. Curated by Ivan Quaroni, the project creates an immersive narrative environment blending installation, performance, and painting. The exhibition centers on a fictional beverage brand called HYDRON³, presented as an elixir of eternal youth symbolically extracted from an ice monolith. According to the artist's conceptual framework, this substance was originally gifted by Mother Nature to humanity but has been intercepted and commercialized by humans. A mysterious entrepreneur named Question Mark controls the brand's global distribution, offering a mediated version rather than the original essence. The exhibition features hybrid figures guarding the monolith fragment and paintings depicting Motta's recurring character JonnyBoy immersed in lush natural settings. JonnyBoy represents youth as an absolute, non-reproducible state of consciousness rather than a biological condition. Motta explains that HYDRON³ serves as a metaphor for contemporary obsessions with permanence, time control, and preservation of beauty and vital energy. The artist describes the conflict as 'Mother Nature creates, man exploits,' with the melting ice crystal symbolizing that eternity cannot be possessed but only experienced. Curator Ivan Quaroni notes that Motta develops this story through immersive devices that transform the exhibition space into a narrative environment, with painting remaining central as the place where imagination becomes visual experience. The exhibition marks a temporary transformation of the historic Milan venue through this conceptual exploration of commercialization, nature, and consciousness.