Artists’ Talk with Francesco Vezzoli, Leo Xu and Shaway Yeh

Contemporary Art Engagement with the Past: Francesco Vezzoli Dealing with the Phantoms of Italian Historical Heritage

Time: Saturday, December 13 at 2:00 pm

Before the unveiling of Francesco Vezzoli’s new video work (Saturday, December 13 at 8:00 pm), the Aurora Museum Theatre hosted a talk in which Vezzoli was seen in conversation with Leo Xu, Shanghainese art critic and director of Leo Xu Projects, and Shaway Yeh, group style editorial director of Modern Media Group.

Leo Xu and Shaway Yeh alternated back and forth asking questions about Francesco Vezzoli’s past, present and future work. A slideshow of the artists’ ongoing project dealing with Roman busts and the use of color in antiquity was provided for the audience’s benefit. To learn more about Vezzoli’s exhibition Teatro Romano at MoMA PS1 in New York see here.

In Francesco Vezzoli’s earlier works he was obsessed with deconstructing the vocabulary of media, the vocabulary of pop culture, the vocabulary of power. For him art has always been a form of psychoanalysis; it allowed him to address his own ghosts and personal issues. The artist explained at the talk this past Saturday that in his previous work he was obsessing over the future and what was happening next, but now he is choosing to take a look back. In his study of history he feels that he is finding explanations for the questions in which he seeks to answer.