UPRISE – Fabio Giampietro

Starting April 15, 2026
Porta di Milano, Milan Malpensa Airport Terminal 1
A project promoted by SEA Aeroporti di Milano, produced by MEET, and curated by Maria Grazia Mattei.

In collaboration with Valuart Sound design: Human Touch, Alessandro Branca

La Porta di Milano, located in Terminal 1 of Milan Malpensa Airport, is a threshold crossed by thousands of people every day—a transit point where time seems to stand still and movement is constant. Starting April 15, travelers will be able to discover UPRISE, a work by Fabio Giampietro that will transform this transit space into an artistic experience.

Presented as part of the Nice to Meet You program, promoted by SEA Aeroporti Milano and curated by MEET Digital Culture Center, UPRISE is a work that redefines the relationship between art, technology, and the urban landscape, where painting and digital imagery coexist and engage in dialogue.

The project stems from over twenty years of the artist’s research on the themes of the city and perception. In UPRISE, Milan becomes the starting point for a radical transformation: the city no longer expands horizontally, but rises, bends, and warps. Architectural structures lose their stability, becoming fluid and suspended. It is a vision that challenges our habitual way of viewing urban space, suggesting new possibilities and new balances.

A space where painting and digital art come together

The exhibition has two complementary dimensions: physical and digital.

On one hand, visitors view paintings. Four of them belong to the Vertigo series, which depicts futuristic, unstable, and fragmented cities that represent a transformation already underway. Accompanying the series is a triptych that presents an alternative Milan, suspended outside of time, belonging neither to the present nor to the future.

On the other hand, the digital version of the work unfolds on the large 12-meter LED wall at Porta di Milano: a looping video of about ten minutes, created in collaboration with Valuart, which takes the viewer on a journey through imaginary cities and alternative versions of Milan.

Rounding out the experience is the sound design by Human Touch and composer Alessandro Branca, which accompanies the visual evolution with an original score that moves from an urban and recognizable beginning toward an increasingly abstract and meditative dimension, amplifying the sense of immersion.

A conversation about the city

The dialogue between painting and the digital realm is not illustrative, but conceptual. These are not two languages that explain one another, but two states of the same possible reality. The painted city remains static; the digital one flows. In between, the visitor moves through the work just as they move through the contemporary city: without a fixed center, suspended between orientation and a loss of control.

UPRISE is not merely a reflection on the city, but on how we inhabit and perceive it. In an era where the boundaries between the real and the digital are becoming increasingly blurred, the work opens up alternative scenarios and invites us to consider urban space as a constantly evolving reality, poised to rise toward new directions.