Pacifico Silano (b. 1986, USA) is a lens-based appropriation artist based in New York City, where he graduated with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. Exploring print culture, image circulation and questions of LGBT+ identity, his work is entirely composed of repurposed fragments from gay pornographic magazines of the 1970s and 80s – an era connecting the progressive legacies of sexual revolution with the advent of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis.

Rephotographing sections of the magazines, Silano assembles his new images into a range of seductive installations, which often reference the materiality of the publications themselves – honing in on stapled centerfolds, torn sheets or the faded color palette of printed pages weathered through time. Bringing contrasting details to the fore, from the familiar visual signifiers of an archetypal masculinity, to more romantic glimpses of an overlooked tenderness, Silano points to the tensions that underlie his source material; between harshness and softness, between joy and melancholy, between the liberation of gay communities and their enduring adherence to wider social norms.

RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025 Assume The Position, Monti8, Rome, IT

Elegy to The Void, Curated by Eric Shiner, New York, NY

2024  Psychosexual Thriller, Island Gallery, New York, NY

2023  Sweetest Kill, Monti8, Latina, Italy

2022 Men Play Games, Luis De Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

If You Gotta Hurt Somebody, Please Hurt Me, Rubber-Factory, New York, NY (2 Location Solo Show)

If You Gotta Hurt Somebody, Please Hurt Me, Fragment Gallery, New York, NY (2 Location Solo Show)

Don’t Worry Baby, Monti 8, Latina, Italy

2021 Cowboys Don’t Shoot Straight ( Like They Used To), Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas

2020 I Won’t Last A Day Without You, Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, OR

Time to Come, The Eye Sees, Arles, FR

The Eyelid Has Its Storms…, Light Work, Syracuse, NY

2019  Fragment Gallery at NADA MIAMI, Miami, FL

Time Is An Ocean But It Ends At The Shore, Rubber-Factory, New York, NY

Fragment Gallery at Sunday Art Fair, London, UK

How To Disappear, Fragment Gallery, Moscow, RUS

Speaking Little, Perhaps Not A Word, Bronx Museum’s Block Gallery, New York, NY

After Silence, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Lancaster, PA

EDUCATION

2012 MFA in Photo, Video and Related Media: School of Visual Arts, New York, NY.   

2008 BFA in Photography: Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Lancaster, PA.

AWARDS AND HONORS

2024 Fountainhead Artist Residency, Miami, FL

2021 The Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Shortlist for First Book Prize 

The Rencontres d’Arles Book Award Shortlist for Artist Book of the Year

The Silver List, Silver Eye Center for Photography, The Black List,  Carnegie Mellon

2020 Silver Art Projects Studio Residency

2019 Bronx Museum of the arts, AIM AT 80 White Street Artist Residency

2018 BRIC Media Arts Fellowship

2016 Lower East Side Print Shop, Key Holder Residency

New York Foundation of The Arts, Fellowship in  Photography

Light Work Artist-in-Residence, Syracuse, NY.

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Alumni Microgrant Recipient

2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Award, Nominee.

Baxter Street, CCNY Workspace Residency, New York, NY.

2013 Aperture Portfolio Prize – Finalist/Runner Up.

The Bronx Museum of The Arts, Artist in The Marketplace Program.    

2012 Aaron Siskind Foundation, Individual Photographer’s Fellowship

Pride Photo Award, First Prize, Open Category, Amsterdam, Netherlands.