Area Riservata
VB62 – sculptures and raw footage
indietroVanessa Beecroft
July 17 – October 26, 2008
Galleria d’Arte Moderna - Complesso Monumentale di Sant’Anna, Palermo
The exhibition presents 13 gesso sculptures and raw footage from Vanessa Beecroft’s performance VB62 held in Palermo at the Church of S. Maria dello Spasimo on July 12 2008. This was Vanessa Beecroft’s first public work in Sicily, where the artist measured herself for the first time with a series of gesso statues – taken from 13 casts of women’s bodies, including the artist herself, her step sister and friends – presented in a performance together with a group of 20 local models. The sculptures are presented together with a projection of 30 minutes of raw footage from the performance, which lasted three hours. This way it is possible to illustrate, through the sculptures and the video, a project which has created a lot of interest and moved the over 2000 visitors who attended the event on July 12 at the Spasimo.In the photographs and performances that have established her international reputation, Vanessa Beecroft sets a group of characters, usually a homogenous selection of nude or partially undressed women, in a tableaux vivant. All the components are meticulously chosen according to autobiographical concerns and sometimes contextual considerations. Beecroft’s work is deceptively simple in its execution, provoking questions around identity politics and voyeurism in the articulated relationship between viewer, model and context. Inspiring Beecroft’s imagery, aside from history of art and film, has always been our tortured relationships with food, fashion, shame and desire, using the female body as privileged and constant element of her research. The work and her conceptual approach is neither performance nor documentary, but something in between, and closer to Renaissance painting. As often happens in Vanessa Beecroft’s work, in VB62 it is possible to find multiple and complex references: from Renaissace sculptor Francesco Laurana’s Eleonora d’Aragona in the collection of the Galleria Regionale Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, to the late baroque Sicilian sculptor, Giacomo Serpotta (1656 – 1732, Palermo) who caused an authentic revolution of style, transforming the traditionally simple use of stucco into a refined and fashionable form of art. The link with Sicilian tradition is emphasized by the collaboration that the artist has started with local craftsmen for the realization of the gesso statues, such as the sculptors Giuseppe Agnello, Salvatore Rizzuti, Antonio Rizzo and Erika Compagnone.Vanessa Beecroft was born in Genoa in 1969, she lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown internationally since 1993. Among her projects: Pescheria di Rialto, Venice, Italy (2007, Biennale di Venezia); Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2007); National Gallery, London, UK (2006); Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2006); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2005); TWA Terminal 5, JFK Airport, New York, USA (2004); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy (2003); Sao Paolo Biennial, Sao Paolo, Brazil (2002); Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy (2001); Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy (2001); Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (1998); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York, USA (1994). The performance VB62 and the related exhibition have been curated by GOCA Palermo Foundation – which has started it’s activity with this event – and supported by the programme Sensi Contemporanei of the Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico (Dipartimento Politiche di Sviluppo e Coesione), Regione Siciliana – Assessorato al Turismo, Comunicazioni e Trasporti (Dipartimento Turismo, Sport e Spettacoli), Comune di Palermo, Lia Rumma Gallery (Naples/Milan) and Massimo Minini Gallery (Brescia).
Free entrance with admission ticket.
