Since 2009, Grasso has developed his ongoing series Studies into the Past which fuse apparently canonical history paintings with futuristic and surreal phenomena derived from the artist’s film practice. Grasso produces paintings in the style of those from bygone eras but which incorporate imagery from his films, creating a seemingly realistic depiction of an event that never occured. In the case of this work, a large cloud depicted in the artist’s 2022 film, Anima, hovers close to the ground in an early Flemish urban perspectival landscape.

The painting, intentionally undated, fuses perceptions of time and reality, creating, as the artist states, a “false historical memory.” It serves as a contemporary artifact so that, in the distant future, it will be impossible to identify the period in which this work was created, thus questioning the distinction between art and artifact.