Pietro Roccasalva's Indecipherable Painting at Lugano Show

The Collezione Olgiati in Lugano presents a solo exhibition of Pietro Roccasalva (born 1970 in Modica), featuring fifty works spanning his career from early breakout pieces to recent productions. The show, curated by Stefano Castelli, demonstrates Roccasalva's persistent quality of absolute otherness—his paintings resist definition and literal interpretation despite their immediate visual appeal. The artist employs a subtractive approach, balancing expressive impulses with a sense of freezing and distance. The exhibition includes paintings, a sculpture titled Fanfaro (2014) that deconstructs Caravaggio, and hidden drawings on Moleskine notebooks that viewers must physically discover. Roccasalva's technique is visually hybrid and indecipherable, making reproductions inadequate. The show covers still life, figure, choral scene, and monochrome genres, each turned inside out. Notable series include Just married machine (derived from a tableau vivant) and La sposa occidentale. The exhibition runs at Collezione Olgiati in Lugano.