Pacifico Silano

CCProjects is pleased to present Shadow Cast, a book launch and accompanying solo exhibition by New York-based artist Pacifico Silano. Silano's reworking of queer archives enters a darkened space of reflection in his haunting typologies of obscured men.

Known for his practice of excavating melancholy, tension, emotion, and friction from vintage gay pornography, Shadow Cast continues Silano's exploration of the dark interior of queer identity. This body of work shifts the focus to life-size, gritty headshots, obscured beyond recognition through rasterization, achieved by risograph manipulation. Employing familiar appropriation strategies, Silano takes quiet, intimate moments and makes the private public in three large scale, archival pigment prints installed in this specially curated presentation at CCProjects. Silano's conceptual gestures of reframing comment on marginality, with his subjects literally kept in the shadows to speak to a hidden mental space pulsing with desire and longing.

Shadow Cast is hand stab-stitched with a thick PVC cover, transforming it into a covetable design object that elevates Silano's ephemeral approach into an experimental publishing gesture. Printed entirely on the risograph and laden with ink, Silano's "Shadows" are corporeal in scale. Shadow Cast is a testament to Silano's ability to comment on queer identity through a unique and intimate lens. Limited to just 500 signed and numbered copies, Loose Joints at CCProjects is currently the only cultural center to carry this project in person.

Pacifico Silano is an artist whose work is an exploration of print culture and LGBTQ identity. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he received his MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. He has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including the Bronx Museum; Tacoma Art Museum; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; International Center for Photography and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Select solo exhibitions include Baxter St @ CCNY, Rubber Factory, The Houston Center for Photography, The Bronx Museum of Arts, Fragment Gallery, Monti8, Luis De Jesus Gallery and Island Gallery. Reviews of his work have appeared in The New Yorker, Financial Times and The Washington Post. Awards include the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship, and the NYFA Fellowship in Photography. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Silano's artist book I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine was published by Loose Joints in 2021 and was a finalist for the Aperture–Paris Photo Photobook Award.