Impara l’arte e mettila da.. lembo

In «15 Portrait 15 Poets», the portrait of Mimmo Grasso tests the poet’s identity against two impersonal languages, the proverb and the scratchcard verdict, to show how even art can be reduced to formula and probability. Zampogna here resumes the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” that runs through his research, but transfers it from advertising imagery to the relationship between face, shared language and the promise of success. The recognisable likeness preserves the memory of a personal relationship, while the formulas crossing it expose the sitter to collective codes that are repeatable and indifferent to singularity.

The deviation from «parte», meaning “aside”, to «lembo», meaning “edge”, does more than replace one word with another. Positioned near the right margin of the field, it turns the proverb into a faulty spatial instruction, as if art had to be set aside not out of prudence, but upon an uncertain border. The inscription crosses the screen printed face and makes it the support of a public error, opposing the poet’s recognisability to the repeatability of the pronouncement. Below, «Non hai vinto», or “You have not won”, converts that pronouncement into a verdict: the authority of the proverb and the prestige of portraiture are subjected to the anonymous logic of the scratchcard. The orange border and acrylic marks invading the field do not merely enliven the image, but fracture its printed regularity, leaving the subject suspended between individual presence and an altered surface.

The work thus introduces a specific tension into the cycle: one who works with words does not master the language that names him, but undergoes its common use, its errors and its conversion into slogan. The irony of the altered proverb remains inseparable from a harsher conclusion, because the failure declared by the ticket also touches the idea of art as knowledge capable of guaranteeing value or salvation. The portrait therefore neither celebrates nor erases the poet. It holds him at the point where identity, friendship and cultural memory are measured by codes unable to recognise them.