The renowned NFT Art artist, Giovanni Motta, is on tour with Lost Paradise: an immersive experience that revolves around 15 silhouettes of JonnyBoy. It is a journey through a post-apocalyptic world, where youth resists as the last form of rebellion.
NFT Art and Lost Paradise: the immersive experience around JonnyBoy by Giovanni Motta
Giovanni Motta, famous artist of NFT Art, presented at ASSAB ONE in Milan, Lost Paradise, an immersive experience that revolves around its protagonist JonnyBoy.
GM from Lost Paradise pic.twitter.com/JVHOLlW9sv
— Giovanni Motta (@mottagio1971) May 11, 2025
In practice, the exhibition features 15 silhouettes of JonnyBoy, hand-painted wooden figures that embody the survivors of a fragmented humanity, each with a distinct identity and a symbol that tells its story.
Every JonnyBoy is a bearer of symbols, objects, and postures that evoke strength, irony, hope, and memory. It is a total work that mixes painting, theatrical scenography, and visual storytelling.
Even the scenography has its own dystopian meaning. In fact, the audience finds itself in front of a cage: inside are the “Furbi,” those who have accelerated the ruin of the world with their cynicism and opportunism. These figures have mirror masks: the symbolic culprits of the end of the world, now exposed to the judgment of the spectator. The work does not accuse, it reflects.
Here is how Motta describes the cage of the set design:
“The cage is not just a boundary, it is a mirror. Whoever looks inside sees themselves, because the difference between those inside and those outside is only a matter of circumstances, of time. The “furbi” are consumed, reduced to nourishment for what remains, because every system that self-destructs is eventually reabsorbed into the cycle of survival.”
Here, Pop language intertwines with manga references, cinematic dystopias, and a hyper-contemporary aesthetic.
NFT Art by Giovanni Motta: JonnyBoy in Lost Paradise and the victory of the inner child
In his interview, Giovanni Motta explained that the undisputed protagonist of his works, including NFT Art, JonnyBoy, represents the inner child that lives within each of us.
It is a journey, a reverse rite of passage, that brings every spectator back to their uncorrupted soul, like “an echo of who we were before the noise of the world buried us in the dust.”
Even in the exhibition Lost Paradise, JonnyBoy is that inner child who always survives. Here is what Motta says about it:
“He is the last survivor. While the adults build empires only to destroy them with the same absurd speed, he continues to play among the ruins. This installation is the reflection of an era that self-destructed, but in the middle of nowhere, JonnyBoy remains the witness of a world that refuses to die.”
Continuing with his interview, then, Motta describes what the viewer of Lost Paradise should be like.
In practice, for the artist, the spectator should travel, feel, get lost, and recognize themselves in JonnyBoy. A bit as if the fact of experiencing something is the proof that they haven’t forgotten anything, otherwise that would indeed be the true apocalypse.
The crypto art exhibition in London
Another immersive experience by JonnyBoy of Giovanni Motta was in London in May 2023, “Like tears in rain”.
Here, the Italian digital artist offered a profound meditation on the nature of human existence and the passage of time. It was more of a contemplation of the metaphor of life and death, as a passage into another dimension.
The spectators have more considered the ultimate transience of all things, with the invitation to reflect on the mysteries of human mortality.
In “Like in the rain”, JonnyBoy made an evocation of childhood memories and the playful innocence of youth.
