Supercosmo

Supercosmo turns the promise of winning into a programme of escape already coded by gambling, in which travel beyond the present coincides with its commercial repetition. In the «Scratch & Win» series, Zampogna does not simply represent the desire for luck, but shows how it is organised by a ready-made media mythology. The cosmos invoked by the title therefore opens no infinite space. It becomes the spectacular version of a mediocre catharsis, entrusted to the ticket price and the probability of a prize. The work thus continues his investigation of contamination between “real reality” and “media reality”, transferring individual experience into a device that anticipates its aspirations and images.

The ticket’s cosmic graphics, enlarged to occupy the entire field, convert promotional material into the environment of experience itself: planets, words, numbers, price and barcode do not accompany the subject, but establish the conditions under which she can be read. The overlap between the woman’s face and the shuttle in turn interrupts the vehicle’s trajectory, holding departure within the static condition of waiting. The body seems both to participate in the journey and to prevent it, while the mixed media on paper preserves the discontinuity between human image and serial graphics without resolving them into a unified scene. Even the instruction “Do not scratch” introduces a paradoxical prohibition: the mechanism promises access to elsewhere, yet suspends the gesture that should activate it.

Through this coincidence of cosmic expansion and commercial closure, Supercosmo sharpens the ironic and tragic character of the series. Elsewhere is not directly denied, but made available as a product, already named, illustrated and priced. The figure retains a recognisable presence, yet her desire becomes legible only through the impersonal signs of gambling. Shown in 2007 in the exhibition «Cirkus» at Artmediastudiozeta in Rome, the work brings forth a condition broader than the mere hope of winning: contemporary imagination can plan even its escape only through the prearranged language of consumption.