The exhibition IL BUCO (THE HOLE) is the consequence and the natural development of the book “Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht” published in 2011 by Andrea Salvino. The book is both the focus and the anthology of all the works on display in the exhibition. The exhibition consists of a large collection of drawings of historical images, film frames, antagonistic news photos, images of National Socialist Germany, eroticism, dead bodies and other diverse images, created in pen, pencil or charcoal by the artist.

“This show doesn’t narrate anything and there’s nothing to understand. It’s so transparent that it reminds me of the Alighiero&Boetti piece, “Niente da vedere nulla da nascondere” (Nothing to See Nothing to Hide). Here, there’s things to see and definitely nothing to hide,” writes Andrea Salvino.

The prophetic disappearance of the image augured by Boetti echoes throughout these walls, by way of an obsessive collection of nothing other than images, ordered according to no guiding theme, no plot, no beginning and no end.

This may be regarded as the personal treasure chest of Salvino as collector. The show appears like an imprudent disclosure of the intellectual and visual connections at the basis of the artist’s creative process. In certain cases, the revelation is made evident in the side-by-side placement of the original drawings and the found images. In other instances, the web of interconnections emerges as an invisible and convoluted plot involving studies, research, biographical circumstances and free association.

The drawings collected belong mostly to a historical repertoire almost always rooted in the real world. These documents become archetypes, which Salvino has put together over the years to understand and justify the present. What is known is in fact represented, in a cycle of rehabilitation and revitalization that passes through the artist’s hand. In this occasion, some images are brought to life in the frame, such as John Travolta, as an object suspended in space with metaphysics, or as the nightgown of Gabriele d’Annunzio.