"The artist is known for his absurdist paintings of animals with overly long legs, contorted bodies, or myriad mutant-like heads or limbs. They're often set amid woodlands or meadows evocative of 18th- and 19th-century academic landscape paintings or depictions of formal hunts. Instead, both domesticated and wild animals graze as normally as they would without dozens of heads or udders attached in unnatural places around their bodies."
"Instead, both domesticated and wild animals graze as normally as they would without dozens of heads or udders attached in unnatural places around their bodies. There's something inherently disturbing about an elephant with a body cloaked in trunks or a giraffe with multiple heads and limbs jutting out in all directions. Despite their bucolic settings and generally calm or curious demeanors, as if nothing is amiss, Pontiroli's paintings evoke a slight sense of dread. What have we done to cause this?"
Pontiroli's work envisions a world governed by a different logic, composed of absurdities and paradoxes. Paintings depict animals with exaggerated limbs, contorted bodies, and multiple heads or udders, placed within 18th- and 19th-century–style woodlands and meadows. Domesticated and wild creatures appear to graze normally despite grotesque anatomical mutations emerging from unexpected places. The calm or curious demeanors of the animals contrast with their distorted forms, producing a subtle, unsettling dread. Iconic examples include elephants cloaked in trunks and giraffes sprouting extra heads and limbs that jut in all directions.
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