tone: Sculptural white
work: VB62 by Vanessa Beecroft

20 girls and 13 life-size plaster statues for VB62, Vanessa Beecroft’s latest performance staged in Santa Maria dello Spasimo Church, Palermo, Sicily last 12 July 2008.
The sculptures are now on show at the Gallery of Modern Art in Palermo accompanied by a 30-minute film shoot illustrating the installation’s most salient phases.

Beecroft’s expressive choice focuses on thinking up and creating performances using young women’s bodies – extraordinary human material that moves in line with precise choreographic commands as though they were on an invisible chessboard. Appropriate musical comments and studied lighting effects complete the experience. These out and out living tableaux highlight a reflection on the themes of look, desire and the fickle world of fashion.

The idea of using Palermo’s famous Spasimo church as the location for VB62 underscores the connection this project has with baroque Sicilian sculpture in particular with Giacomo Serpotta (1656 – 1732, Palermo) an artist Giulio Carlo Argan has described as “one of the eighteenth century’s greatest sculptors.

VB62 - Vanessa Beecroft
17 July – 26 October 2008
 www.galleriadartemodernapalermo.it