Tutte le strade portano a.. Genova

In «15 Portrait 15 Poets», the portrait of Gabriele Perretta turns the proverb’s certain orientation into a particular destination, subjecting individual identity to the friction between common language, personal memory and the verdict of chance. Zampogna does not use the recognisability of his poet friend to establish a celebratory image. Instead, he places it within collective codes that seem to precede and determine it: the proverbial phrase, already worn down by use, and the grammar of the scratchcard, which reduces expectation to a predetermined outcome. The shift from “Rome” to “Genoa” removes the maxim from its apparent universality, but supplies no explanation. The deviation opens a precise yet opaque reference, in which the city’s name can act as memory, allusion or destination without settling into narrative.

The linguistic substitution therefore produces a double movement: it makes the formula readable again while preventing its consumption as shared wisdom. This fracture is answered by magenta brushstrokes that cross and frame the screen printed face, breaking its continuity without erasing its features. The colour does not complete the portrait, but introduces an alien pressure, as though the individual had to emerge through the same interference that exposes him. Below, the phrase “You have not won” returns every possible route to the impersonal sentence of the game: the named city promises a singular direction, while the verdict denies that this direction amounts to an achievement. Face, altered proverb and response do not illustrate one another. They remain in tension, each unable to absorb the others completely.

The work resumes the contamination between “real reality” and “media reality” central to Zampogna’s research, but transfers it to friendship, poetry and sedimented language. Here the subject is not made anonymous by advertising, but exposed to the anonymous force of formulas that organise recognition and desire. The portrait preserves Gabriele Perretta as an identifiable presence, yet refuses to separate that presence from the codes that disturb it. What emerges is an unresolved identity, positioned between a named destination and a declared loss.