The Sottopassaggio delle Cure is a very popular place in Florence. It used to be a dangerous place where homeless people and drug addicts would hang out, now it is a beautiful gallery tunneling a connection between the northern part and southern part of the city. This strange labrynth of passageways is neccesary because Florence is the victim of some rather poor civil engineering and has been cut into two parts by a terribly designed railroad system. It is a beautiful gallery in the two senses: (1) it is an underground tunnel twisting it's way underneath traffic that allows pedestrians to freely cross the railroads without engaging in the risky business of track and traffic crossing, (2) it has slowly evolved into an open source art gallery thanks in part (most part) to This man:
- This is Toto A.K.A. l'angelo del sottopassaggio - a bum with an undefined past who lives behind a small door near the center of the sottopassaggio, and he ussually spends his days cleaning up the messes people (and artists) leave, decorating the halls with strange flowers and incense sticks, and greeting every pedestrian who passes by, often trying to lure them into listening to his stories of former glory. Toto' has also appointed himself the role of "curator" of the gallery, and he basically decides who is entitled to paint the walls with some sort of graffiti art, as well as when and where they can do it

We had run into Toto' many time before, as we used to live just accross the street from the sottopassaggio, but we had never had the chance to stop and talk with him. Until that day, when an old friend of Jeremy - the amazing Mario di Poppa - came to visit us in Florence and he told Jeremy that he would love to do something crazy with us. At that time, we were however extremely busy with the Fiasco art project, but we decided that it would be great to take a little break in order to make something crazy. The only idea we came up with was to make some graffiti on a wall, more under the form of a stencil though. As we were scouting out the neighborhood in order to find out a proper place to put paint on a wall, we thought it would be nice to ask Toto' whether we could exhibit our art into his gallery. Toto' reaction was rather strange, but he eventually told us that we could paint whatever wall we decide to, as long as we would be painting only between 8pm till 8am.

The same night, after having bought a large number of paint and brushes, we all gathered together into the sottopassaggio and started painting. We started around 9 or 10 pm and we kept going until 8am sharp, although some of our friends left us much earlier than that.

The painting represents a re-elaboration of the first art project that we have ever made as O'Khaos: the point is that there is no point. It basically consists of a series of sections of various shapes and dimensions arranged in such a way that, when looking at the spot in which the various shapes intersect with each others, the human brain generates a black spot over the white background - hence the title. The art piece has been inspired by the Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely, one of the founder of the Op-Art movement, but mainly the author of the postcard-size seriagraph for which Jeremy traded his car for before coming to Florence - thank you Book Zoo !