In his sculptures Zagallo reaches the ideal match between the powerful expressiveness of the material used, with its texture and compactness, and the organic, living insertion of the human intervention. This is the final step of a long journey made of a multi-layered learning that has brought the artist to discover the intensity of the old paintings on wood - dotted with the marks of nails - to section the slab of marble with fractures, then to expose the soul of wood after removing its skin, and in the end to mark the anthropomorphic bronzes with cavities and cuts that, according to Zagallo's poetics, strive to reach a reassembling of the parts.

Complying with the formal nature of sculpture, the approach to this creative reality is mediated by eyesight and touch.

Zagallo moulds his works with his hands and eyes. But then he lets the light lead the gaze of the viewer into the hollows, in order to grasp the evocative value. Poetics is conceived as a self-contained body that can open up to call the presence of the heart and soul.
Both the wooden sculptures and the bronzes are emblematic shapes that, in the inner drama of matter, display smooth surfaces in sharp contrast with the material texture of the rest, as in Eros - three standing men - Mercurio.

Each sculpture then relates to the surrounding, to the space as a presence, and it is trace, imprint, becoming a medium between the inner and the outer world, between nature and artistic intervention.

Each sculpture then relates to the surrounding, to the space as a presence, and it is trace, imprint, becoming a medium between the inner and the outer world, between nature and artistic intervention.
Through the research of resonance between the interior and the exterior, the artist has pinpointed the possibility of making any human manifestation visible. In the eroded images, in the contrast between the finished and the unfinished, in the relation between solid and void, you can feel all the expressiveness of an intense experience capturing and making you aware of the deep felt duty mediated by sculpture, where the object in itself is not so fundamental, its interpretation and representation is. The inner reality becomes more important of the hedonistic taste arising in front of the beauty of plasticity. As a matter of fact, the most recent evolution in Zagallo's path leads us to closer examinations, in which a strong emotional symbology is rendered through the in-your-face approach of the latest installations.

Gabriella Niero