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In Butchers, violence does not break into the order of everyday life, but appears already domesticated by the same visual weave that turns labour, flesh and consumption into equivalent images. Zampogna does not represent the drama of slaughter at its climax, but the moment when it has been incorporated into an ordinary procedure and can be displayed without apparent conflict. His investigation of the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” finds a precise consequence here: what should retain the irreducible weight of the body enters a visual regime capable of making it available, familiar and almost neutral.

The figure in a coat displays an animal remnant with the calm of a professional gesture, and this frontality reduces the distance between witnessing violence and presenting merchandise. The man’s identity and the exact nature of the fragment need not be established for the operation to become clear: the pose delivers both to the gaze as components of a scene already normalised. The wallpaper intensifies this process by overlaying the figure with flowers, butterflies, lettering and grids. The support does not simply contain the image, but absorbs it into a decorative and informational flow in which body, clothing and setting lose their hierarchy. Ornament does not diminish violence by erasing it. It makes violence continuous with the seductive noise of communication and consumption.

In relation to the figurative tradition of slaughter, the work therefore shifts trauma from the represented act to the conditions of its visibility. The frictionless coexistence of animal remnant, professional pose and floral surface shows how easily drama can become one image among others. This passage reveals a central concern in Zampogna’s research: the codes that organise the present do not necessarily conceal reality, but make it consumable precisely while exposing it. The viewer is left with a scene that remains legible yet morally unstable, in which normality constitutes the most disturbing form of violence.