Critical text
Drafted by the archive with the help of AI, not written by the artist.
The promise of good fortune invades identity and makes it legible only through the impersonal grammar of gambling, which fuels desire precisely as it postpones verification. In the «Scratch & Win» series, Zampogna does not simply depict a ticket, but enlarges its language until it becomes the person’s environment. The media mythology of sudden wealth thus replaces lived space with a system of instructions, prizes and possible combinations. The individual does not appear before the promise, but within it, subjected to a code that assigns value to life insofar as it may still win.
The monochrome figure is absorbed into the graphic field without entirely losing her recognisability, and this precarious persistence makes the contamination of «real reality» and «media reality» visible. The body interrupts the serial images, yet is also traversed by them: singularity survives as a faint apparition within a surface designed to address anyone. Above, «CACCIA AL PROVERBIO» and «Primo premio 2 miliardi!» turn common language into a promotional appeal; below, «Attenzione! Non grattare qui» places a prohibition within the gesture that should reveal the outcome. The reward is announced and simultaneously withdrawn, while the barcode reiterates the reduction of experience to a verifiable commodity.
The work carries the series’ irony towards a more ambiguous form, because the absurdity of the promise does not diminish its hold on the subject. Gambling organises hope and frustration together, offering a mediocre catharsis that can survive only while it remains incomplete. Even the proverb, an anonymous formula of collective memory, is absorbed by the logic of the prize and transformed into a commercial riddle. Zampogna thus shows that media reality does not merely surround identity: it supplies the words through which identity desires and the standard against which it measures itself. What remains is a person who is still visible, but already converted into the expectant surface of a result.
Related

A caval donato….
shown together
2001

Abaco
shown together
2005

Animali porta fortuna
shown together
2004

Animali porta fortuna
shown together
2004

Animali porta fortuna
shown together
2004

Animali porta fortuna
shown together
2004

A caval donato non si guarda in.. carta
same subject
2009

Can che abbaia non.. nuota
same subject
2009

Chi dorme non piglia.. corde
same subject
2009

Ci sono sempre orecchie sull’altro lato del.. sole
same subject
2009

Il cuore lieto e forte vince l’amara.. Corte
same subject
2009

Senza titolo
same year
2001
