CURA.

The XXIV Premio Pino Pascali 2022 has been awarded to Nico Vascellari. Until 9 April 2023, the Pino Pascali Foundation will be hosting the solo exhibition Tre, Quattro Galline, curated by the Commission of the Prize chaired by Rosalba Branà and the curators Roberto Lacarbonara and Pier Paolo Pancotto.
The exhibition features original sculptures and collages. The Work Out Of Step (2022), placed on the front wall at the entrance of the main room, consists of three sheep-shaped elements: a reference to the homonymous album by the American hardcore punk band Minor Threat. The artist employs an anarchist metaphor of being “out of the pack” while also recovering his secret tattoo of this iconic element.
The relationship with the animal world, the central theme of the exhibition, also returns in the main installation Tre, Quattro Galline (2022), placed in the centre of the main room. A mysterious sculptural presence that, destined to reveal itself only when accessing the hall, involves and rejects the audience by surprising them visually and emotionally.
Through this intervention, Vascellari reignites a reflection on our technical and artificial relationship with the natural element, often subjected to forms of control, confinement, production and commercial organization. With a similar premise, 88 collages of the Unknown Eyes series (2022) were made using food packaging characterized by graphic illustrations of animals of which, however, one only sees the eyes emerge from a dark background.
In the room that hosts the work Cinque bachi da setola e un bozzolo (1968) by Pino Pascali, Vascellari places the two collages Lidl, 14.04.2021, Roma (2021) and Carrefour, 05.04.2021, Roma (2022), a clear reference to the commercial exploitation of the image of animals for a rhetorical narrative, ultimately intertwining consumption, play, nature and childhood.
The work Uroboro (2022) was thoughtfully installed in the room that houses the archive of the graphic and photographic works of Pino Pascali. Uroboro marks the synthesis and development of the relationship between natural (wood) and artificial (rubber) materials; in fact, the structural analogies between a snake and a tyre define an inexhaustible short-circuit between life and the commodity.
The exhibition continues in the city centre of Polignano, at Exchiesetta, with the neon work W.F.Y. (2022).