Too Unsettling for Some? Good. Art Was Never Meant to Be Comfortable

Someone recently told me that my Umanoidi Collection is "unsettling."

Not beautiful.

Not intriguing.

Not powerful.

Just unsettling.

And honestly? I took it as a compliment.

In a digital world where art is often reduced to decor, and comfort is currency, being called unsettling is the highest form of praise. It means something cracked the surface. Something got in. Umanoidi is not here to soothe, it’s here to awaken.

This series was never meant to blend in with the beige walls of indifference. It doesn't ask for your approval. It stares back. Each figure, hybrid, raw, grotesque, sometimes tender, holds a mirror to our human dimension. The parts we sanitize. The feelings we scroll past. The truths we pretend aren’t ours.

Let’s be clear: Umanoidi is not for everyone. But neither is truth. Neither is art that dares to question the role we play in our own disconnection. These creatures, these fractured silhouettes of humanhood, are echoes of our anxieties, our digital postures, our masked performativity.

The reaction, “this makes me uncomfortable” is not a failure of the artwork. It’s its function. If you're feeling something, if you're resisting something, then the art is working.

I’m not interested in universal consensus. I’m interested in friction. In emotion. In the moments when your scrolling thumb pauses, not because the image is pretty, but because it refuses to be ignored.

And here’s the thing: if we can’t even face a painting,

how are we supposed to face ourselves?

I invite you, not as a passive viewer but as an active presence, to look again. Look with unease, look with anger, look with fascination. Just don’t look away.

Visit the full Umanoidi collection here,

and tell me, what do you see? Honestly!

Because maybe art isn’t meant to decorate your feed.

Maybe it’s meant to disturb your algorithm.

Let's close with this thought

and This other "unsettling painting"

“What a great example you’re setting!” That’s what a high school teacher said when standing in front of Don't Smoking Before.

Ironic, right?Because the piece was meant to say exactly the opposite.

We live wrapped in a padded version of reality, curated by social media, filtered for comfort, smoothed over until nothing sharp remains. But art was never meant to be smooth. Its job is to scrape, to reveal, to provoke.

As a former smoker, Don't Smoking Before is my way of exploring what drives us into addiction, not just cigarettes, but every self-soothing, numbing pattern we repeat. Emotional dependencies, toxic habits, aesthetic illusions.

The title is a warning, yes, but also a question. What happens before the smoke? What lives in the silence before the act, the habit, the vice?

And yet, instead of guiding young people to think critically, some educators still choose to label and dismiss. That, to me, is the real defeat: when fear of discomfort outweighs the urge to understand.

Art isn’t here to set a good example. It’s here to wake us up.

To conclude this article, I leave you with the words of Italian art critic and journalist Angelo Mistrangelo, who commented on Michele di Erre's 2016 exhibition “Umanoidi” during the “Ioespongo XVI” show. His reflections, still remarkably relevant today, offer a deeper reading of the grotesque, ironic, and emotionally charged vision that fuels my work:

“Irony and Signals from the Superhero”

From the Hero to the Humanoid, and onward to a reinterpretation of the "deadly sins," Michele di Erre's ongoing investigation navigates through society, time, and the landscapes of contemporary culture.

Once an actor and photographer, now an ironic and strikingly incisive illustrator, Michele entrusts the intense visual sequences of his cycles The Sins of the Hero and Humanoidi with the task of expressing a carefully crafted research path, presented during “Ioespongo XVI.” His style is marked by a vibrant line, used to define, in an entirely personal key, themes such as “Pride” or the sin of “Gluttony.”

In this way, Michele di Erre engages directly with humanity and its ancient, never-vanished sins, adopting the rhythms of a grotesque figuration, biting and raw, reminiscent of Maccari and Grosz.

His figures are infused with social critique, a storytelling that merges expressive faces with visceral sensations. These emerge through a visual language that draws from comics, Japanese manga, and the metaphysical stage sets of memory.

In the background: the skyscrapers of a metropolis, a shattered TV screen, a cat silently watching an embrace (Lust). These become powerful subjects, rendered in oil and pure amber on canvas and wood.

His drawing acquires a highly emotional and expressive value, charged with energy, transcending reality to enter a universe of characters, gestures, and situations, in a continuous dialogue between Sloth and Greed.

Alongside the painted tableaus of the capital sins, we also find the communal mourning in Unnailed Christ, and the symbolic visions of works like Power and Rhythmic Eyes Movements, part of a powerful reinterpretation of our restless, problematic, and intricate present.

Michele di Erre’s vision flows through an inner allegiance to the legacy and thought of Caravaggio and Schiele, Modigliani and Pazienza, all the way to Alessandri, in what becomes a magical assemblage of ideas, experiments, and poetic visions.

His representations belong to us, with all the latent strength of a line capable of fixing, in atmospheric space, the unspoken dream of a rediscovered childhood. A moment that reaches beyond truth, entering the enchanting realm of an uncontaminated imagination.

So please let me know what are u thinking about this case. Comment please! Thank you so much for your support!