American conceptual artist Pacifico Silano’s practice is rooted in excavating the printed ephemera of gay culture to create new images that comment on loss, longing and queer melancholy. In particular, Silano uses the gestures of framing, cropping and layering vintage gay erotica to comment on the HIV/AIDS crisis and its reverberations on queer lives, which included the loss of the artist’s uncle at the height of the epidemic.
I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine is Silano’s first artist’s book, and engages with an ambitious accordion-folded format that references Silano’s photo-based installations: two twenty-panel long sequences that can be read as both one continuous collage and a sequence of individual images. Included in the book is an interview with the artist by José Diaz, Chief Curator of The Andy Warhol Museum.
I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine by Pacifico Silano, published by Loose Joints.
An immersive book-as-exhibition, unfolding to over 2 metres in length
40 pages, 40 colour plates, 200 × 250 mm, 2021
Trimmed hardcover with continuous leporello binding
Includes an interview by José Diaz with the artist
ISBN 978-1-912719-24-2
Print edition also available, A2 four-colour risograph, edition of 200 copies.
About Pacifico Silano:
Pacifico Silano is a lens-based artist whose work is an exploration of print culture, the circulation of imagery and LGBTQ+ identity. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he received his MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. Selected solo exhibitions include Baxter ST@CCNY, The Bronx Museum of The Arts Block Gallery, Fragment Gallery in Moscow, Light Work, Melanie Flood Projects, Rubber-Factory, and Stellar Projects. Silano’s awards include the Aaron Siskind Foundation’s Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize and the 2019 Bronx Museum of The Arts Block Gallery Residency. His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art & Musée de l’Elysée, Switzerland. Silano’s work will be included in forthcoming exhibition Fantasy America at The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, March 5–August 30, 2021.
About Loose Joints:
Loose Joints is an independent publishing house collaborating with leading and emerging artists on contemporary approaches to photography in book form. Loose Joints circulates new perspectives through a dedicated list seeking to elevate underrepresented voices in contemporary visual discourse. Each title is the result of close collaboration with artists from start to finish, with all design, editing and production done in-house. Loose Joints also operates independently as a design studio, working across publishing and the arts. Loose Joints is based in Marseille and was founded in London in 2015 by Sarah Piegay Espenon and Lewis Chaplin.
