The Northern Italian artist has made a name for himself with innovative, genre-defying films that subvert the tropes of melodramas, musicals, and horror movies. His use of elaborate puppets and CGI-animation creates disorienting viewing experiences of an ambiguous and unsettling, though entirely engrossing, sort. Next week, Lafayette Anticipations welcomes his first solo exhibition in Paris. Titled Prom and transforming the space “into a hybrid cinema”, the show will run from April 1 to July 19 and present four films, including La Gola. We’re excited to offer a sneak preview of the film in its new English-language version, created for the show.

Structured as an epistolary exchange between Gianni, a well-to-do glutton, and Rossana, an overwhelmed caretaker, La Gola juxtaposes the former’s account of an exquisite banquet while the latter details her elderly mother’s mental decline and physical decrepitude. Marcon presents the couple as hyperrealistic mannequins with motionless busts, aside from their eyes which are animated with CGI.

“The fact that we are surrounded by violence might be precisely why it could be important to evaluate the possibility of making work loaded with a certain amount of violence…. This might help us in dealing with it, in responding to it, in recognizing it, and so on and so forth.” DIEGO MARCON

As in the rest of his films, the feeling that something is off emerges in the first few seconds of viewing La Gola and only grows from there. Gianni’s total apathy for his beloved correspondent is so grotesque that it becomes darkly comic. Marcon’s playful use of language, which is excruciatingly graphic and told within haunting tableaux that alternate between dark and light backgrounds and are heightened with a melodramatic score from his longtime collaborator Federico Chiari, builds an uncanny world that leaves the audience unsure of what to think, producing a strange and memorable moment.

Diego Marcon was born in Busto Arsizio, Italy, in 1985. His practice, primarily moving image-based, has established him as one of the most interesting artists of his generation. He has had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunsthalle Basel, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Triennale Milano, and several other prestigious galleries. His work has also been featured at the 59th and 60th Venice Biennale, as well as the Tate Modern, Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Viennale.

© Diego Marcon. Courtesy the Artist; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York; Kunstverein Hamburg; Kunsthalle Wien; and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève for BIM ’24

Special thanks to Diego Marcon, Camilla Romeo and Sadie Coles HQ. The quote featured above first appeared in Kate Brown’s article “Diego Marcon’s Uncanny Films Will Haunt You Long After They’re Finished”, published in Artnet on December 7, 2025.