About
Reception for the artist: Saturday, December 14, 2002, 6-8pm
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "VB46 Photographs," a selection of photographs taken during the VB46 performance held at the Beverly Hills gallery in 2001.
The photographs depict different points in time throughout the three hour performance. The women begin en masse, aggressive and strong, slowly melting into boredom and exhaustion from the physical trial of the performance. This juxtaposition between power and vulnerability has become the hallmark of Beecroft’s work. The female figure is the tool for Beecroft’s art—the skin tone, and costuming is the color; the curve of the back, the line. The twenty-eight posed women are boyish and athletic, relating them to classical Greek kouroi. Their bodies are painted white, and against the white cube of the gallery space, this decidedly monochromatic performance recalls the work of artists like Malevich and Ryman.
Vanessa Beecroft, born in Italy and residing in New York, has become one of Contemporary Art’s most lauded young artists. Her work has been exhibited at international venues such as the Kunstalle Wien in Austria, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy.
