G—G

Your portraits balance familiarity and strangeness, sometimes through slight animal interference and at other times through figures that are clearly hybrid. How do you calibrate that range, and what draws you to work across it?

GIANO CESARE

There's something that happens when a face or figure becomes hard to place that I keep returning to. When we encounter a face, our first impulse is to define what we are seeing, to fit it into something we already understand. But when the work resists that—whether through a slight interference or a more overt hybrid form—it keeps us there longer. That's where I begin.

I'm interested in what happens in that hesitation. The longer we remain with an image, the more its edges blur. What at first seems artificial might start to feel intimate. Sometimes a minor displacement carries a kind of unexpected tenderness. Other times a figure becomes unmistakably hybrid, and that directness alters the charge of the encounter. Just as easily, human traits can seem distant, unfamiliar, even unsettling. That instability creates a real displacement. Meaning feels less delivered than produced through sustained attention.

Animality, for me, isn't a subject in itself. It's a disturbance in how we read the face and the figure. Sometimes that enters through slight interference, and sometimes it becomes more overt, through forms that are unmistakably hybrid. Not in a dramatic or symbolic way, but as a pressure that reveals how delicate our sense of certainty really is.

G—G

Your practice seems to gesture toward a social dimension. These shifts between subtle animal interference and explicit hybrid form might be read as commentary on how we decide what kind of being we are looking at. Does that interpretation resonate with your intentions?

GIANO CESARE

It resonates, yes, but I try not to frame it too directly. The pieces allow for that kind of reading without insisting on it.

We're surrounded by systems that sort and separate, often in ways that feel natural until we stop to question them. We romanticize animals in some contexts, and in others we use animal metaphors to justify exclusion or dehumanization. That contradiction is very present in how we relate to what is different or unfamiliar. The portraits don't try to illustrate that friction, but I think they absorb it. They leave room for it.

The suggestion is not: here is what this means. It's more: what are you seeing, and why? What makes a face seem familiar to you, and what makes it resist placement? The figures are not positioned to deliver answers. They offer a visual field in which these doubts can begin to form on their own.

G—G

These hybrid characteristics might suggest something primal within human identity. Do you see this blurring of boundaries as recovering something essential, or is it more about disrupting categories altogether?

GIANO CESARE

I don't really separate those two. They may not be as opposed as they seem.

The idea of the "primal" is already shaped by contrast, by what we're supposed to have left behind in becoming civilized. But identity doesn't live neatly on one side or the other. It moves. It adapts. It refuses to stay still. The portraits occupy that unstable interval, between instinct and structure, the familiar and the unfamiliar.

I don't see them as trying to return to some original state. What interests me more is how they refuse arrival. They're always in an in-between condition, more becoming than product. Some people perceive power in them, others find vulnerability. Some feel drawn in, others unsettled. I don't try to guide that.

If anything, the portraits are less about the subject than about the viewer. They mirror how we sort what we observe, what we welcome, what we hesitate over. The categories we use—human, animal, self, other—aren't fixed truths. They're structures we rely on for orientation. But they're also fragile. Once you begin to question them, even visually, you start to see how easily they can move. That indeterminacy is not a void. It's full of possibilities.

G—G

There's a strong physicality to these portraits despite their digital construction. What draws you toward creating that sculptural quality in your work?

GIANO CESARE

I've always thought of pictures as having weight. Even on a screen, a portrait should seem to occupy space. It should feel touchable, even if we know it isn't.

My approach is closer to sculpture than to painting. I don't just render. I build. I start by thinking in mass and structure. I consider how light moves across a surface, how a face can seem shaped by pressure and time. Then I use generative tools to extend that method, not to clean it up but to complicate it.

There's a temptation in digital practice to aim for perfection, but I find that flattening. I want the surface to hold pressure. Skin, for example, has density. It has history. So I try to keep those traces visible. I want the image to seem handled, as if it has a life behind it. Even when the subject feels unfamiliar, it should still register as physically present.

The technology gives me flexibility, but the foundation is still material. Drawing, sculpting, layering—I think of these portraits as objects, not just pictures. That may be why they exert a physical pull. They ask to be approached, not just scanned.

G—G

Your figures seem to return the gaze, creating a different dynamic from traditional portraiture, where subjects are typically passive. Could you speak to this exchange between subject and viewer?

GIANO CESARE

That reversal is intentional. In most portraits, the subject is there to be seen, almost as if they are offering themselves up for interpretation. The viewer holds the power. They decide how to attend, what to feel, how to make sense of the face in front of them.

But I've always been more interested in what happens when that power is shared, when the portrait seems to notice you back. Not in a dramatic or confrontational way, but enough to alter the balance. Some faces meet you directly, others seem to assess or withdraw, but there's always a sense that they are aware of being seen.

That small reversal changes the dynamic. It turns observation into an exchange. It asks something of the viewer. Not just "Who is this?" but "Why do you see them this way?" And maybe even "What do they see in you?"

That's the question at the core of the series. The title comes from it. The portraits don't just invite attention. They ask what you're bringing to the encounter. In that moment, the image becomes a kind of mirror.

G—G

When creating these portraits, do you consider the different ways viewers might engage with them, intellectually or emotionally? Does one mode of response interest you more than others?

GIANO CESARE

I don't really separate those two. We take in an image with more than our eyes. We bring memory, instinct, belief, and bias into the encounter. Sometimes we register something before we can explain it, and I think that's often the moment when the image is doing its deepest work.

I'm less interested in guiding how people should respond and more curious about what happens when the response escapes language, when the piece bypasses explanation and stays with someone for reasons they may not even understand. That's the kind of reaction I trust.