Animali portafortuna 1

Animali portafortuna 1 stages individual desire as an image already administered by gambling, turning the promise of luck into a structure that absorbs and devalues human presence. In the Scratch & Win series, Zampogna represents not simply the aspiration to wealth, but the visual code that makes it repeatable, accessible and at the same time illusory. The lucky animal, taken from the imagery of the instant ticket, guarantees no passage to a better condition. Instead, it organizes expectation according to a media mythology in which chance assumes the reassuring form of a product.

The lucky cow, enlarged until it dominates the figure, converts a playful emblem into an apparatus that towers over the individual and predetermines expectation. Fragments of words, numbers and signs scattered across its body interrupt its decorative innocence, making the animal coincide with the impersonal grammar of combinations and prizes. Beneath this presence, the seated figure, rendered in the same green as the ground, loses substance and autonomy: face, hands and clothing seem to emerge from a surface that is already assimilating them. The contrast between the icon’s sharp screenprinted outline and the person’s less stable definition prevents the two images from sharing a real space. Their encounter takes place only within the montage, where the commercial promise acquires greater visibility than its recipient.

The work thus brings the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” into the very construction of identity. Advertising is no longer merely superimposed upon life, because the figure already appears to have been conceived through the repertory meant to console it. The irony of the smiling cow does not lighten this subordination, but makes it more severe: luck offers a friendly face while reducing desire to an available combination. What remains before the viewer is a suspended presence, unable to separate itself from the image that promises its redemption.