Milan Design Week 2025, artist and designer Andrea Semeghini, known as VANADIO23, presents his ceramic collection P0RN0 ROMANTIKO in an extraordinary site-specific installation. As part of the Porta Venezia Design District circuit, the exhibition will take place at the gallery space on Via Giorgio Jan 3, featuring an immersive journey designed in collaboration with BLOOM, a green design studio.

Vanadio23, a Milan-based artist and designer, presents P0RN0 ROMANTIKO, an installation that plays with the boundaries between innocence and provocation, between the visible and the hidden. The exhibition consists of a series of miniature ceramics, displayed within glass cases. The images painted on them are only revealed through a magnifying glass—an essential tool to unveil the most intimate and unsettling details of the works.

“The P0RN0 ROMANTIKO collection draws inspiration from memories of the ceramic pieces in the dusty cupboards of grandmothers’ homes,” says Vanadio23. “From festive table settings to childhood games with rag dolls. The ceramic pieces, decorated with classic blue and white motifs reminiscent of traditional Chinese ceramics, evoke the atmosphere of antique tableware reserved for special occasions.”

At first glance, the depicted scenes seem to take inspiration from traditional rural and pastoral iconography. However, upon closer inspection, hyper-realistic details loaded with erotic tension emerge, merging aesthetics and provocation in a visual and emotional short circuit. The small scale of the works recalls dollhouse collectibles, suggesting an illusory delicacy that contrasts with the explicit intensity of the subjects represented. This play of opposites—attraction and repulsion, innocence and transgression—is the beating heart of the exhibition.

P0RN0 ROMANTIKO is an exploration of vision and the tension between contrasts. The visual and emotional ambiguity of the works sparks a dialogue on desire and its conventions, challenging the boundaries between beauty and disturbance. It is an experience that goes beyond mere observation, engaging the viewer in an intimate and complex journey between what attracts and what unsettles.