Art exhibition "yeki bud yeki nabud" - Thomas Scalco
Thomas Scalco
yeki bud yeki nabud
یکی بود یکی نبود
Curated by Gabriele Salvaterra
28/03/2026 – 11/04/2026
Thomas Scalco (Vicenza, 1987), through his work, tells stories without actually telling them and, at the same time, within his paintings sketches places that do not exist. Visible and invisible, presence and absence, fullness and emptiness chase one another within his compositions, made up of minute brushstrokes that attempt to forget the overall project, moving through trajectories and textures which, when seen from a distance, can appear paradoxical.
His narratives have no theme and his allegories seem interrupted: they suggest the sensation of a semantic connection while frustrating the possibility of tracing a single, univocal correspondence.
For this reason, the Persian phrase yeki bud yeki nabud—the equivalent of our once upon a time—captures precisely the blurred progression of the artist’s practice. The literal translation—there was someone, there was no one—highlights the coexistence of unrealized potential within the forms of the painting, of existences that do not exist, realizable only within the world of authentic fiction that painting creates, like in a fairy tale.
In the spaces of the Kunstforum Unterland in Egna (BZ), Thomas Scalco stages these silent stories, which have no direction and within which each viewer is invited to rediscover forgotten narratives. Through recent paintings, collages of fragments, and sculptural constructions marked by a deeply painterly vocation, the artist engages with the exhibition space in an experimental way, avoiding the idea of simply displaying previously completed works, and instead allowing the rooms to resonate with the artistic presences that inhabit them.
Inauguration: 28/03/2026 at 18:00
Introduction: Gabriele Salvaterra
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