Page 29 - Art at VIPERGEN Korr

Michael Bevilacqua: Fade to Black, 2006.
Mixed media on wooden plates in three parts, 184 x 366 cm.
Michael Bevilacqua’s works have previously been described as time capsules. In his paintings, the artist collects everything that interests him, and thus, there are references to film, literature, logos, music, and fashion. Michael Bevilacqua does not distinguish between high and low culture. Instead, he depicts what occupies him, and his entire work can thus be read as a kind of autobiographical confession of what interested him at what times in his life. The artist mixes his media, and in the case of Fade to Black, e.g., fixed artificial grass covers the surface of the painting. The work is divided into three, a so-called triptych, the shape of which is known from church paintings, where religious stories can be depicted procedurally on the three image surfaces. With Michael Bevilacqua, it is not religion that is presented, but rather the artist’s everyday life. The work is compositionally complex. The figuration shifts from being naturalistic to cartoonish line drawings, and the sensation of stepping into another mind arises; a kind of stream of consciousness of everything that has been sensed and that has seemed necessary to hand down
Michael Bevilacqua (1966 US) lives and works in New York. He studied at Cambridge College of Art and Technology. Michael Bevilacqua has exhibited his works in several leading museums and galleries worldwide, including PACT,
FR; Jacob Lewis, US; Chelsea Art Museum, US; Palais de Tokyo, FR; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, GR; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, DK and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, US. His works are part of the collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
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