Young Italian artist Elio Varuna recently exhibited alongside Ron English in Rome. His work is in the finest Surrealist tradition, presenting the banal in a fantastical context and challenging the hegemony of Western secular liberalism while laughing and letching all the way. Despite his iconoclastic vision Elio has been embraced by mass culture with his work appearing on designer jewellery and a special edition Mini Coupé. Piramide Cestia is part of Elio’s popular Urbis Surrealis series where his trademark dreamlike ghoulies take a wild rumpus inside classic pieces appropriated from the master of etching, Giovanni Piranese.