Can che abbaia non.. nuota

In «15 Portrait 15 Poets», Sergio Zuccaro’s identity becomes the point of friction between individual recognisability and two collective languages that have become automatic: the proverb and the verdict of the scratchcard. Zampogna does not present the poet as the guarantor of an intact word, but exposes his portrait to the erosion of anonymous formulas, shared precisely because they are repeated. The physiognomy preserves the presence of a personal relationship, while common language and the impersonal language of gambling transfer it into codes that belong to everyone and no one. The work thus continues the investigation into the contamination of “real reality” and “media reality”, applying it to identity and the social circulation of words.

The deviation in «Can che abbaia non.. nuota» breaks the expectation on which the proverb bases its authority: the phrase remains recognisable, but its incongruous ending converts prescriptive wisdom into an unstable linguistic event. Superimposed on the lower part of the portrait, the text does not comment on Sergio Zuccaro. Instead, it forces face and word to interfere, as if the recognisability of one depended on the error of the other. The orange acrylic border and incursions further interrupt the continuity of the screen printed face, opposing the irregularity of gesture to the technical repeatability of the image. Below, the fragment «non hai», meaning “you have not”, introduces the register of the scratchcard: the anonymous response of a missed prize enters the poet’s surface and reduces expectation to an administered formula.

The work brings the earlier iconography of the scratchcard into a network of friendships and individual recognition. The loss concerns not only the prize, but also the possibility that common language might preserve a stable meaning and that portraiture might return an unmediated identity. Yet the error reopens what the formula had closed: «nuota», meaning “swims”, produces an unexpected association and restores to language a mobility that the proverb had worn away. Between printed image, painterly gesture and diverted phrase, Zuccaro remains recognisable without becoming fully available, removed both from the celebratory fixity of portraiture and from the anonymity of the collective code.