Jakub Julian Ziolkowsky. Nasellini

Nasellini is the first solo exhibition of the Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski in an Italian museum, curated by Lorenzo Giusti with the assistance of Rowena Chiu.

Ziolkowski is known for his surreal paintings inhabited by fantastic and often disquieting creatures. His is a “pictorial organicism” nourished by heterogeneous references to a mixture of Western and Eastern traditions that converse with the history of the artistic avant-gardes. The emerging iconographies narrate states of mind, chaotic worlds in which reality and imagination become confused, and project the viewer into a universe of dreams, recollections, and desires. In appearance dominated by chaos, Ziolkowski’s works in reality contain an inner order governed by currents of interwoven narrative.

The third in a yearlong series at the MAN devoted to a diffuse investigation of the actuality of painting, the exhibition revolves around “a peculiar kind of pasta, the “Nasellini”, an imaginary dish inspired by the shape of the nasal cavity that evokes the legend of “tortellini”, which are said to originate from observation of the navel”.

With paintings, sculptures and a series of film clips produced during a period of residency in Sardinia, the artist will present a surreal advertising campaign promoting the sale of “Nasellini”. The project explores the dividing line between the real and the unreal, with a deconsecration – through irony, deconstruction and the expedient of play – of the collective memory connected with pasta, one of Italy’s signature elements.

The works will appear in a space modified for the project, with a site-specific installation that evokes the atmosphere of a traditional trattoria, replete with coloured walls on which painted posters are haphazardly displayed.

The video footage, all shot between Nuoro and Sardinia’s coasts using amateur actors, was made possible with a special grant from the Fondazione Sardegna Film Commission.