Idolo in Nove Scatti

I call this tribute to American Pop Art the Idolo in Nove Scatti wallpaper — the movement that taught the world to read the face of a film star the way one reads an advertising poster.

The design shows the face of a film star, taken from a black-and-white publicity photograph, repeated identically across a grid of nine square panels set three by three: the same tilted head, the arched eyebrows, the half-closed eyes, the glossy parted lips, the sharp cut at the collarbone that fills every cell. Each panel wears a different colour combination — hot pink, acid turquoise, egg yellow, tangerine, violet, black and white — so that the identical face reads as nine variations, not as a simple repeated square. The technique evokes hand-pulled screen printing: the drag of the squeegee, the uneven ink coverage, the dot grain that stands in for the photographic halftone, the slight registration shift between the black line and the colours beneath.

In this multiplication I see not the loss of a face but its consecration as an icon: the more it is repeated, the more it becomes a symbol, a surface onto which each of us projects our own desire. It is the gaze of the viewer that, finding the same face nine times over, makes it infinite.

In the WallZad print works the Idolo in Nove Scatti wallpaper comes from a faithful reproduction of this painting: every brushstroke, every pool of ink, every ghost registration cross is returned with the care of those who know that pop, to be authentic, must keep all its surface imperfection.