Gianluca Abbate's video art trilogy explores contemporary society through Panorama and Supermarket

Curated by Giovanni Viceconte, the HUMANS project on Artribune TV presents video portraits of contemporary society, born from the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Each appointment is identified by a keyword. The seventh episode, titled "DENSITÀ," features two works by Gianluca Abbate: Panorama (2014, 7 min) and Supermarket (2018, 8 min), part of a planned trilogy. Abbate, born in Salerno in 1980 and based in Rome, creates video composites using green screen footage, photos, animation, and 3D graphics, deliberately showing the boundaries of his tools. Panorama was inspired by the urban landscape seen from a train window, constructing an imaginary city from amateur footage and computer graphics. Supermarket examines the perspective between shoppers and billboard figures in malls, compressing them into a two-dimensional, medieval-like hierarchy that reinterprets supermarkets as places of worship. The third chapter, "Utopia, nostalgia del futuro," will focus on a giant, fragmented human body from which plants and fountains emerge, inspired by Tintoretto's Paradise at Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Abbate reflects that Covid-19 has deepened societal tensions and changed human interactions, but supermarkets remain open. His films have been screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, MAXXI Rome, MMOMA Moscow, Istanbul Modern, MOCA Hiroshima, and Palais de Paris, and broadcast on ARTE France. He teaches at Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone and NABA Rome.