Jacopo Zambello
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Jacopo Zambello’s artistic research moves along the edge between reality and imagination, where the ambiguity of his subjects and the insertion of unexpected elements transform the scene into a vibrant terrain, halfway between document and controlled hallucination. It is a method that structures interconnected thematic cycles, almost like chapters of a visual novel, in which each figure opens the way to the next with a carefully crafted naturalness.
Guided by a conceptual horizon inspired by Jean Baudrillard, Zambello entrusts the image with the task of sowing doubt, revealing subtle sensitivities, and exposing the “short circuit” of contemporary humanity: oscillating, partly animal, partly a prisoner of habits believed to be objective until something, a light, a gesture, a sound, suddenly cracks them open.
His source material is heterogeneous and nearly cinematic: 1960s archival pornography, amateur photographs, and meticulously constructed photographic sets. Zambello processes these materials first through drawing, the skeleton and underlying structure of the image, then through painting, which amplifies, complicates, and animates them.
The artist conceives the exhibition space as a single choral work: paintings hung at varying heights, monumental prints, overturned canvases, patches of synthetic grass. A subtle choreography of presences that together creates a narrative broader than the individual images.
The body, often nude and intimate, is his guiding thread/filled with rouge. Identity remains concealed, while the textures of fabrics do the speaking: kilims, floral bedsheets, colorful knitwear, surfaces almost more eloquent than the faces themselves. The canvases thus become cinematic planes in which one seems to catch a shift of light, the rise of a breath.
For Zambello, the body is not only a subject but also a tool: a means of understanding the world, the living boundary that separates us from and simultaneously connects us to what surrounds us: the world.
Text by Davide Paoletti
Jacopo Zambello was born in Rovigo in 1999. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. In 2022, hewon the Painting section of the 14th edition of the Nocivelli Prize. In 2023, he received the Martini International Award at the San Fedele Visual Arts Prize and was included in the book 222 Artists to Invest In, published by Exibart. He was an atelier resident at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice for the 2023–24 term. In 2025, he was among the winners of the eighth edition of We Art Open. His work has been exhibited in numerous shows, including: (2025) Do I Bother?, Rumi Art Space, Dongo (CO); L’Amore che Facciamo, Ego Project Space, Milan; Qui Giace un Fulmine Caduto, Galeria Nueva, Madrid, Spain; New Art Frontiers, Altro Mondo Creative Space, Makai City, Philippines; (2024) Campo Magnetico, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation – Palazzetto Tito, Venice; La prima volta, Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (MI); Chi sono io – Indagini sul corpo, Galleria San Fedele, Milan; Uscita Pistoia #1, Spazio A, Pistoia; (2023) Antares, Magazzini del Sale, Venice; (2022) Le Stanze del Contemporaneo, Palazzo Martinengo, Brescia.
