Considered a master of the enigmatic, Pietro Roccasalva constructs a dense and layered imaginary, developing complex symbols that freely draw from multiple cultural and popular domains, giving shape to a pictorial language that is deeply learned and, at the same time, unsettling. In the Milanese venue of the Massimo De Carlo gallery, within spaces designed by Piero Portaluppi, the exhibition unfolds into an intimate and stratified narrative. Just beyond the main room, almost set apart, a painting depicting the artist’s mother emerges: a transfigured yet still recognizable figure, captured in a suspended pose while holding a kind of cornucopia filled with enigmatic objects, symbolic “relics” that seem to allude to a personal identity fragmented and reconstructed through memory.
A destra: Pietro Roccasalva, “Le parti libere”, 2026; in secondo piano: Pietro Roccasalva, “La sposa occidentale”, 2026, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo
In his first solo exhibition in Milan, Roccasalva thus chooses to narrate an interweaving of memories and evocations: alongside the portrait of his mother, images tied to past recollections appear, placing new subjects in dialogue with figures already belonging to his iconographic repertoire. Alongside this autobiographical dimension, equally familiar yet disorienting presences emerge: among them, some childlike figures that recall the artist’s daughter. Their faces, marked by dark, deep, almost opaque eyes, evoke a certain “Modiglianesque” lineage while simultaneously overturning its meaning. If at first they appear empty or impenetrable, upon closer inspection they reveal an intense emotional density, as if they were guarding a restrained affective dimension, suspended between distance and intimacy.
Da sinistra a destra: Pietro Roccasalva, “Il Bravo, (A Ventrioloquist)”, 2026; “Il Bravo, (The Envy spirit looks at the sun sideways)”, 2026, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo
The architecture of the gallery itself, with its rationalist solemnity, seems to recede progressively. The white, almost neutral walls end up amplifying the presence of the works, which, though modest in size, possess a visual resonance capable of redefining the space. The viewer’s eye is constantly drawn back to the paintings, attracted by a chromatic tension dominated by deep reds, blacks, and browns, which stand out forcefully against the pristine background. From the very first encounter, the painted figures present themselves as ambiguous apparitions: faces and bodies suspended in a dreamlike dimension, constructed through postures that almost recall an ancient iconographic tradition, yet at the same time withdrawn from full, deeply human legibility. They seem to seek a dialogue with the viewer, while remaining anchored in a dimension of silence and retreat, as if they belonged to a space more mental than real.
Pietro Roccasalva, “Portrait with half line of beauty (Sulamita does not cease to write)”, 2026, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo
As the exhibition title suggests, these presences seem intent on remaining confined within a sort of “inner cave,” in the dark territory of the artist’s thought. And yet, precisely at the moment in which they manifest, they generate an emotional tension that oscillates between unease and melancholy, making visible the very process through which imagination takes form. It is here that dream and memory merge, finding a concrete translation in painting. This dynamic is particularly evident in the works from the “Il Bravo” series, including “The Envy Spirit Looks at the Sun Sideways”, “I greet you, light, but with injured nerves” and “Ventriloquist”. In these works, the figure of an enigmatic child emerges, already laden with memory and symbolic tension. The image has its roots in children’s literature, reworked through the imagination of Heinrich Hoffmann, the author who, in the mid-nineteenth century, made the character of Shock-headed Peter (Der Struwwelpeter) famous. Roccasalva reinterprets this figure as an “entropic child”: a body in which neglect and lack of care become a visible metaphor for the passage of time, a disorderly growth that imprints itself directly onto matter, transforming decay into an expressive sign.
Da sinistra a destra: Pietro Roccasalva, “My Private Sunset (Ritratto di Bravo nella U invertita)”, 2026; “La Sposa Occidentale”, 2026, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo
Curious and deeply characteristic of the artist is the exhibition’s title, taken from “The Poetaster” by Ben Jonson, which introduces a further level of interpretation. The comedy, staged in 1601, blends satire and philosophical reflection, contrasting bad poetry with the moral virtue of authentic poetry. In this tension between high and low registers, between irony and seriousness, Roccasalva’s own practice is reflected: he constructs a hybrid visual language, traversed by continuous semantic shifts and cultural contaminations. What emerges is an exhibition path that does not offer univocal answers, but rather invites the viewer to dwell in ambiguity, in that liminal zone where the image becomes an enigma and painting returns, first and foremost, to being a device for thought.
Carolina Colciago
Info:
Pietro Roccasalva. Io ti saluto, luce, ma con nervi offesi
05.03.2026 – 19.04.2026
MASSIMODECARLO
Viale Lombardia, 17 – Milano
www.massimodecarlo.com
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
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