Ozmo | Gionata Gesi (Pontedera 1975)

Visual artist, muralist and icon-hacker. From clandestine tags on Tuscan railcars to augmented-reality altarpieces in European museums, Ozmo has spent three decades rewiring the dialogue between classical imagery and pop culture.

Origins & Training (1990-2000)

Raised on underground comics and Florentine plaster casts, Gesi adopted the tag Ozmo in 1992—the year seminal hip-hop magazine Aelle devoted a twelve-page spread to his whole-car pieces. Formal study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze grafted Renaissance perspective and gold-leaf technique onto a graffiti vocabulary already sampling corporate mascots and manga heroes. The result is an “iconographic remix” process: archives, AI permutations and sketchbook collages condense before each wall, then explode into multi-layer aerosol, acrylic and brush palimpsests.

Milan Vanguard (2001-2012)

After relocating to Milan, Ozmo oscillated between Leoncavallo social centre and blue-chip venues. Roberto Pinto’s Assab One 2004 positioned him among twenty-three rising painters; his photobook Milano. Guida Alternativa (Postmedia Books 2004) became Italy’s first street-art survey. Museum invitations followed: Con Altri Occhi (2005), Street Art Sweet Art (PAC 2007) and Scala Mercalli (2008). His 200 m² nave fresco at Leoncavallo (2009) was hailed a “contemporary Sistine Chapel.”

Brand & Pop-Culture Dialogues (2003-2019)

Commercial work served as a laboratory for scale. Absolut Vodka’s live-paint campaign Wall Paper 2.0 (Milan & Rome 2010) turned billboards into performance art Popsop ▸; a behind-the-scenes cut survives on Vimeo watch ▸. Diesel enlisted him for a World AIDS Day façade in Paris (2019), blending activism and advertising. Coverage ran from *Vanity Fair* to ANSA.

Museum Breakthrough (2012)

The Museo del Novecento granted Ozmo a two-week public residency culminating in Il Pre-Giudizio Universale—its first graffiti acquisition. Eight months later MACRO’s rooftop became the 300 m² diptych Voi Valete Più di Molti Passeri! within the Urban Arena programme.

Global Murals & Biennials (2011-2020)

Ozmo authored more than sixty monumental walls worldwide. *Big Fish Eats Small Fish* (Cargo, Shoreditch 2011) recast Bruegel’s allegory for London’s financial hub. Miami’s 30 × 6 m *Lady Liberty & David* (2014) placed America’s Liberty and Michelangelo’s hero on a shared plinth. Deep inside Carrara’s Ravaccione mine, *Creation of Adam* (2017) turned a marble quarry into an open-air Sistine vault.

Academia & Civic Commissions (2021-2025)

The academic realm embraced Ozmo when King’s College London hosted Workshop of Icons (2023), a week-long live studio in Bush House Arcade. For Paris’ Planète Périphérique festival (2023) he painted *Apollo & Daphne*—mythic lovers bridged by an Olympic ring—across a 26 m façade. The Mauritshuis-led programme *Museum Murals* (2024) asked him to re-imagine a Roman Venus on a Heerlen tower, while La Spezia’s WWII bunker became the site-specific *Ieri, Oggi e Domani* (2024). Late 2024 saw the AI-augmented portrait *Free Cecilia Sala* appear overnight in central Paris.

  • KCL events ▸ · Workshop video ▸ · StreetArtLondon ▸
  • Ville de Paris ▸ · StreetArtNews ▸ · Le Parisien ▸ ANSA Liguria ▸
  • Mauritshuis ▸ · RTL Nieuws ▸ · StreetArtCities ▸
  • ANSA ▸ · Hyperallergic ▸ ·

    Research & Current Practice

    Now based in Paris, Ozmo prototypes an “AI-glitch pipeline”: neural nets devour iconographic archives, spit out warped composites, and those projections re-enter public space as AR overlays. Studio “memory mirrors”—oil-on-panel echoes of his walls—enter institutional collections, underlining his mantra: “walls remember better than servers.” Coverage spans Sky Arte’s feature on *Transatlantica* (IIC NY 2023) and the IIC catalogue for *Glitched Gods of Olympus* (2024).

    Recognition & Scholarship

    Ozmo’s influence is cemented by a dedicated Treccani Encyclopaedia entry (2013), the 248-page monograph OZMO 1998-2018 (Crowdbooks), and multiple chapters in The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright in Street Art & Graffiti. He has delivered keynotes at Wired Next Fest, IUAV, NABA and Palazzo Blu, bridging street practice, academic law and digital humanities.