Visual Artist for Vol. 123: Facing Fronts
Jacopo Riccardi
Bologna, Italy
Masked figures traverse a surreal landscape towards a mysterious
reservoir. Besides their disturbing disguises—their masks sport hollow
eyes and gritted teeth—the travelers wear typical modern fashions (tank
tops, shorts, tennis shoes). They appear to be resolutely normal modern
subjects displaced from their natural environment, rendered incognito,
and dropped into an alternate world for some unknown errand. This
unsettling collision of the mundane and the uncanny is typical of the
work of Jacopo Riccardi, the artist behind this volume. His illustrations
and works have a whimsical comic touch but often venture into darker
and more offbeat territory, covering both the bizarre and the bawdy
and touching on dark subjects like environmental collapse. The artist
offsets the occasionally challenging subject matter with an eye catching
fluorescent color palette and engaging visual storytelling.
Jacopo Riccardi is a freelance illustrator from Italy. He studied Comics
& Illustration at the Fine Arts Academy in Bologna and Editorial
Illustration at ISIA Urbino. Riccardi also works with a number of
commercial clients from the world of print and web editorial ranging
from Die Zeit, Illustoria, Polygon, The Verge, to Italian publications
Corriere della Sera and Il Sole 24 Ore.