In the year 2000, his solo exhibition at the Zumtobel-Lichtzentrum Gallery in Berlin during Expo Hannover was the occasion for a new innovation. On display were ten mixed media paintings, three digital graphics presented on watercolour paper, and five Forme Pittoriche Tridimensionali (Three-dimensional Pictorial Forms) illuminated by projectors that were able to change their chromatic shades.

In the same year, the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice dedicated a solo exhibition to him, in which he presented a series of pictorial forms and pictorial evolutions, curated by Floriano De Santi.

Between 2000 and 2002, starting from a reflection on symmetries and compositional balances, he began and completed Asimmetrie (Asymmetries): a series in which irregular geometric shapes originate from opposing movements. Sometimes the source is the human face, analysed in its asymmetrical structure; at other times the works are created by the random encounter of coloured marks applied to different areas of the canvas.

In 2001, he exhibited at the New Art Gallery in Padua, curated by Massimo Donà with a text by Stefano Zecchi, where he presented works on canvas, plexiglass and digital graphics, all created in the same year. He has a solo exhibition at Gary Nader in Miami and at the University of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he teaches at the time, with a catalogue and texts by Angelo Bucarelli and Beke Zsòfia in which he presents thirty digital graphics created using the Epson process, thanks to which he also reflects on the serial nature of the work.

Work and research on painting continued unabated, but in 2002 he began a new experimentation, linked on the one hand to performance with the projects Skin to Skin (2002) and Nouvelles Realitées (2003), and on the other to photography with Era Eros (2004). A large canvas is stretched vertically, in front of which a naked performer stands, and Mustica traces her silhouette on the surface. The action is photographed, the image is digitally processed, printed on methacrylate, and then retouched with acrylic.
In 2002, at the Museum der Stadt Waiblingen, Mustica then took her research into painting to a further level with a series of performances entitled Skin to Skin, curated by Helmut Herbst.

The artist worked with colour on the canvas and, at the same time, also on the naked performer in front of it, so that both were involved in the painting process. The performances are then translated into prints and acrylic on methacrylate, in works that have the name of the woman they immortalise as their title.

During the same year, at the Meo Museum in Budapest, Mustica chose to present a complete project entitled New body new skin, curated by Gianluca Marziani: the starting point is painting on canvas, followed by a selection of prints on Plexiglas, three three-dimensional pictorial forms and the video Evoluzioni Pittoriche (Pictorial Evolutions), with the aim of highlighting the relationship between painting, sculpture and digital art, as well as their synthesis in the work.

In 2003, at the Galerie Leda Fletcher in Geneva, he presented the works created during the performances in Nouvelles Realitées, curated by Gianluca Marziani.

Reality becomes more pronounced, increasing in physical volume to the extent that it invades the field of vision. The epidermis, with its forms, emerges onto the scene, and here we observe the manifestation of the feminine beauty that Mustica employs to establish a complete short circuit between matter and colour, abstraction and figure, two-dimensionality and volume.[i

From the same year, he also created small-scale pictorial forms using the stereolithography process.

[i] Gianluca Marziani, Viaggio al centro della donna, in Gianluca Marziani, Mark Ruyters (ed.), op. cit. p. 29.

In 2004, after a first approach to the female world, a return to figuration in which the gestural actions of the bodies were the result, Mustica made a further transition with Era Eros, a series of digital watercolour cards: the artist photographed naked female bodies in an aseptic set, portraits of individuals or couples. He concentrates on the details, adding colour to the mouth, tongue, breasts and pubis, while the bodies remain ethereal and milky. The choice of watercolour on paper reinforces the materiality of the result. The upper part of the face is excluded from the photographs, but the titles refer to the possibilities and characteristics of the gaze (Celestial Eyes, Deep Eyes, Intriguing Eyes).

The anthropomorphic bodies abruptly emerge from the drawing mass and become real as they reveal themselves in Era Eros and in the performances. The body modifications thus manifest the artistic obsession and the contrasting will to hide and, concomitantly, to present oneself in the act of exhibition. It is therefore argued that art is part of the partial acceptance of the obsession that generates the creative drama.[i]

[i] Fortunato D’Amico, Dell’arte di cucinare l’arte, in Fortunato D’Amico (ed.), Mustica. Pittura Solida, Skira, Milan, 2010, p. 17