Whatever great artist or thinker we choose to look at, they’ve all used whatever weapon they might have to attract interest to their thoughts. I don’t see anything wrong with using celebrities to make clearer, more understandable statements or, in my case, simply to reflect a reality that has a huge power over our lives. I insist that the taboo surrounding my work comes from the fact that people get stuck on the presence of Gore Vidal or Cate Blanchett. I’m kind of stuck...too.
—Francesco Vezzoli
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Sacrilegio,” Francesco Vezzoli’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Over the last decade, in a series of titillating works that have explored the undisputed power of contemporary media culture, Vezzoli has staged his ongoing preoccupations with the fundamental ambiguity of truth, the seductive power of language, and the instability of the human persona. These include a trailer for a remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula (2005), starring Vidal himself, Helen Mirren, and Courtney Love; an advertising campaign directed by Roman Polanski for Greed, a fictitious perfume; and elaborate, site-specific performances inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luigi Pirandello, and Salvador Dalí that have featured superstars like Catherine Deneuve, Cate Blanchett, and Lady Gaga.
As the title of the exhibition suggests, Vezzoli has pushed his ideas regarding the sanctification of secular and materialistic obsessions to their ultimate hyperbole. Transforming Gagosian’s vast gallery into a Renaissance chapel, he has installed enlarged reinterpretations of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Madonna-and-Child paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli and others. But instead of the beatific Madonnas that grace each of the historical precedents, Vezzoli’s women are contemporary supermodels—Claudia Schiffer, Tatjana Patitz, Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, and Kim Alexis, among others. In conflating supermodels with historical religious icons, Vezzoli points to the societal worship of figures from the fashion and celebrity industries.
