Matteo Giuntini primarily operates within the realm of painting, but does so in a disruptive and visceral manner. His art is pantheistic, celebrating nature and its irrational power. Part of this nature is humanity: not the center of a world at its service, but an active and thoughtful subject in the chaotic whirlwind of natural things. The connections that the Livorno painter proposes to us are deceits to unsettle us: words lead us away from meanings, cause-and-effect relationships break before our eyes. We find ourselves in the realm of the absurd and paradoxically fully at ease, after the initial disorientation. The difficulty of existing in the world, common to every human being, explodes on Giuntini’s canvas through grotesque faces and primordial symbols reminiscent of cave paintings. Botanical elements that seem to emerge from medieval herbals burst into the representation: they are not comforting or decorative images, but fragments of nature that burn like our soul, while animalistic profiles emerge from the background. It is a kind of mystical art, made of contemporary animism that settles on every aspect of reality to devour it, assimilate it, and finally return it to the canvas in the form of painting.