Nico Vascellari, Pastorale , 2025. Terra, acciaio inox, latex, impianto a pressione, compressori, sementi, impianto di irrigazione / Soil, stainless steel, latex, pressure system, compressors, seeds, irrigation system . Base / Base 33 × 10,4 m. Scultura / Sculpture 130 × 270 × 270 cm. Ph. Melania Dalle Grave – DSL Studio. Courtesy Studio Nico Vascellari

Nico Vascellari: “Pastorale” at Palazzo Reale, Milan

“I remember swallowing a cherry pit as a child…” From this very first line, Nico Vascellari invites us to think of the body as a field to be sown, a fertile clod where fear can blossom into vision. It reads like an unexpected allegory for the entire exhibition: Pastorale is not a refuge from horror, but a gesture of passage. As if beneath the dust of the Caryatids bombed in 1943, in the cracks of blackened marble, the possibility of a new kind of idyll still grows, one that is alien, uneasy, born not from escape but from collision.

Opening on March 31, 2025, and on view through June 2 at the Sala delle Cariatidi in Palazzo Reale, Milan, Pastorale is far more than a solo exhibition, it is a complex, layered, site-specific organism that engages not only with the architecture and history of its space, but with time itself. Curated by Sergio Risaliti and produced by Codalunga with the support of Banca Ifis, Pastorale is a conceptual and emotional exploration of nature, memory, and regeneration. It is no coincidence that its venue is a space where the scars of the past have been left visible, eloquent wounds in the form of broken columns, walls marked by bombings, surfaces flooded with light and silence.

It is precisely from this architectural and symbolic rupture that Vascellari’s journey begins. Pastorale takes its name from a musical and artistic genre traditionally associated with bucolic scenes and untouched natural harmony. But here, nothing is peaceful or pacified. If anything, the idyll is threatened, decomposed, sullied by reality. This is a Pastorale of disillusionment, of survival, where nature is not just solace but a force of resistance, something that endures and asserts itself.

As visitors enter, they feel dwarfed. The mute grandeur of the hall, amplified by Vascellari’s visual and sonic interventions, imposes a slower rhythm on the breath. The entire space feels suspended between ruin and rebirth. The installation offers no didactic path; instead, one is dropped into a psychological landscape, an inner ecosystem made of charred wood, twisted metal, guttural sounds, and sudden apparitions. The works do not merely present themselves; they hide, then emerge, demanding attention, presence, and a willingness to dwell in uncertainty. In some instances, the viewer is immersed in full-scale installations where organic, industrial, and digital elements converge in a visual ritual.

Nature, real, evoked, sublimated, takes on a central role. Raised among the forests of Vittorio Veneto, Vascellari has always maintained a visceral connection to landscape, but here that bond becomes a critical tool, a lens through which to examine the present. Pastorale arrives in a time marked by war, environmental and social fractures, and widespread instability. And yet, rather than retreat into nostalgia, the artist invents a mythological future where the natural and the human meld into new, monstrous, utopian forms.

One emblem of this vision? The boop: hybrid, colorful, anthropoid beings drawn by the artist and scattered throughout the exhibition’s visual identity. Far from mere mascots, they appear on posters and in the bookshop (designed in collaboration with NM3), but also function as totemic presences, sentinels of the unknown. Their language is silent yet potent: wide eyes, precarious stances. They symbolize a worldview no longer interested in reassurance, only transformation.

And like any true rite, Pastorale will conclude with a ritual epilogue.

On June 3, 2025, the day after the official closing, the spirit of the exhibition will literally shift bodies, migrating to Circolo Magnolia, a legendary live music venue in Milan. There, the official afterparty curated by Codalunga and Propaganda will reawaken the codes of the show through sonic performance.

On stage, Ninos Du Brasil, Vascellari himself joined by Nicolò Fortuni, will unleash a physically charged live set where batucada becomes noise, tribalism meets electronics, and the audience, sweaty, deafened, entranced, will become an active part of the ritual. Following this, Bawrut, a sonic alchemist known for weaving hypnotic and layered soundscapes, will transform the dancefloor into a synthetic forest.

Taking place at Circolo Magnolia, Via Circonvallazione Idroscalo 41, from 10:00 PM onwards, the event will not be a simple closing party, but a natural extension of the Pastorale ethos: a thought that refuses to be confined within museum walls and instead seeks bodies, rhythm, and collective trance.

As if the dark, silent heart of the Sala delle Cariatidi still needed to beat, to become sweat, vibration, noise.

When the exhibition is over and the boop fall silent, what will remain is the sense of an experience that swept through the city like an electric wind. What will remain is a question, planted like a seed: what does it mean today to invoke nature in a world in ruins? What will remain is the image of a child, afraid a cherry tree might grow in his stomach, and later, as an adult, that fear turns into desire. Into an ideal.

And maybe Pastorale is just that:
A vegetal desire.
A utopia with dirty roots.

Not a work that blossoms, but one that germinates.

– Fakewhale