LOCATION: Outdoor exhibition by Artillerigatan / Vengatan MAP
Exploring print culture, image circulation and questions of LGBT+ identity, Pacifico Silano’s work is entirely composed of repurposed fragments from gay pornographic magazines of the 1970s and 80s – an era connecting the progressive legacies of sexual revolution with the advent of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis. As Vince Aletti wrote in The New Yorker magazine in 2022: Pacifico Silano’s soft-core source material is unmistakable but elusive, like a memory resurfacing or a dream slipping away.
Rephotographing sections of the magazines, Silano assembles his new images into a range of seductive installations, which often reference the materiality of the publications themselves – honing in on stapled centerfolds, torn sheets or the faded color palette of printed pages weathered through time. Bringing contrasting details to the fore, from the familiar visual signifiers of an archetypal masculinity, to more romantic glimpses of an overlooked tenderness, Silano points to the tensions that underlie his source material; between harshness and softness, between joy and melancholy, between the liberation of gay communities and their enduring adherence to wider social norms.
Pacifico Silano is a lens-based appropriation artist based in New York City, where he graduated with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. His works have been exhibited in both group and solo shows and are also found in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
