Ruco was born in Rome in 1991 and he has been drawing since he can remember. During high school, he began to take an interest in the world of tattooing and approached thisjob as soon as he finished school. Ruco began tattooing in 2012 in Florence, while studying Art Printing Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts and he began receiving invitations as a guest in several studios around the world: Mexico, Israel, Honk Hong... His figurative style is the result of numerous influences from the most different fields. The main thread is related to the taste for the grotesque. Passionate about masks, he made them a source of research, producing them by hand. In addition to his own tattoo studio in the heart of Rome, Ruco pursues his other passions in a small private studio where he finds his space to create masks and costumes, model clay, paint, and so on. In 2018 Ruco brought out the research project related to the theme of the tattoo ritual "STILLIFE BRÜCKE" in collaboration with Servadio: 4-handed sessions in which the surrounding environment becomes the subject of the tattoo, whether it is a predefined and static composition or a changing and dynamic situation. In this way, the subject is not previously decided nor born from the imagination of the artists but represents what you have in front of your eyes during the ritual.

In this work made of raw clay, the artist depicts a soul from Purgatory engulfed in flames. The imagery draws from the iconographic tradition of Neapolitan sacred art.

An atheist yet fascinated by Christian symbols, Ruco uses the figure of the purging soul not as a reference to the afterlife, but as a metaphor for an earthly existential condition. The flames do not burn to atone for sins after death—they represent the torment one endures during life.

The arms raised upward do not call upon a deity—they are the gesture of someone desperately seeking relief.

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