Animali porta fortuna

Within the «Scratch & Win» series, the work turns luck into a media device that promises salvation while reducing personal experience to a predetermined combination. Zampogna does not simply represent a game. He adopts its visual grammar as a form of contemporary existence: the desire for change is entrusted to already coded images, instructions, and signs that present chance as a possibility available for consumption. The earlier contamination between «real reality» and «media reality» hardens here into a more binding relationship, since the person no longer observes the advertising promise from outside but seems to inhabit its space directly.

The ticket graphic, enlarged until it occupies the entire field, converts the promise of a prize into a total environment, where the rooster, nest, and chicks lose any narrative innocence and operate as prefabricated emblems of good fortune. The saturated colours and sharp outlines of the screen printing ink give this mythology an aggressive clarity, similar to a command. Against that certainty, the desaturated female figure with a photographic appearance, disproportionate to the illustrated animals, retains a trace of individuality but appears subordinate to the promotional code. Her frontal stance does not establish an autonomous presence. Instead, it turns her into a motionless intruder, already absorbed into the artificial landscape of winning.

The work thus takes Zampogna’s research beyond the simple superimposition of heterogeneous registers. The discontinuity between person and illustration remains visible, but it offers no way out. It shows how identity can be accommodated, measured, and ultimately devalued by a mythology of consumption. The irony of the lucky animals therefore acquires a tragic implication. The promised catharsis does not coincide with real change, but with the acceptance of a language that converts hope, biography, and desire into probability. A recognisable human presence remains, yet it lacks the power to escape the scene that is supposed to serve it.