Hidden Works
Focus on Hidden Works (since 2014, first presented in 2023)
LUCA ROSSI 2009 > 2023
Luca Rossi has been called the most interesting artistic personality in Italy by Fabio Cavallucci. Since 2009, ‘Luca Rossi’, an open collective, blogger, critical curator, artist and controversial figure in the art system, has been trying to stimulate more critical discussion on a daily basis in the field of contemporary art as a subject that could play a fundamental role in our present. From his own critical reflections, widely disseminated through magazines such as Flash Art, Exibart, Artribune and with 770,000 people reached on social media in the last 12 months alone, an unconventional artistic project has descended, dissemination and training projects with the creation in 2016 of the “Luca Rossi Art Academy” (www.documenta.live). In 2014, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio interviewed in Artribune, referred to Luca Rossi as the future promise of contemporary art, comparing him to what ‘Vanessa Beecroft’ might have been in the 1990s. Despite the fact that some ‘critical nodes’ are extremely well-known in the art system (‘Ikea Evoluta’, ‘Young Indiana Jones Syndrome’ and ‘Grandparents Parents Foundation’, etc.), Luca Rossi still experiences ostracism in a system that still cannot accept some increasingly necessary and urgent reflections. In 2014, the famous art critic Angela Vettese declared that since reading Luca Rossi’s texts, she has decided to no longer dedicate herself to the practice of art but only to theory.
Selected official and unofficial art projects:
Mart, Rovereto (2009); Whitney Biennial, New York (2010); Biennale di Venezia (2013, 2015, 2019, 2022); Abbazia di Sénanque (2013); Gamec di Bergamo (2014); Boros Collection, Berlino (2015); Serpentine Gallery, Londra (2015); Fondazione Prada, Milano (2016); Hotel Helvetia, Porretta Terme (2016); Quirinale, Roma (2017); SMACH 2017, Val Badia (2017); New Museum, New York, (2017, 2021); Tate Modern, Londra (2017, 2021); National Gallery of Scotland (2018); Centrale Fies/ Manifesta 12, 7800 Project (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, #OccupySandretto (2018); ICA Milano (2019); Gagosian Gallery Rome (2019); Venezuelan Pavilion (2019); Prada Foundation Venice (2019); My Arbor My Art, MyArbor (2019); Palazzo Strozzi (2021,2022); Hangar Bicocca (2021); Bourse de Commerce (2021); Pompidou Museum (2022); MoMA Museum (2022); Documenta 15 (2022); Lisson Gallery (2022), BienNolo (Milano 2023); Bourse de Commerce (Paris, 2013); Galleria SIX (Milan, 2023); Campanini Contemporary (Berlin, 2024); Padilione Itaglia, Magazzeno Art Gallery (Bologna, 2024).
Artworks by Luca Rossi are within these art collections: Pietro and Luciano Lomonaco, Antonio Dalle Nogare, Marcello Forin, Giorgio Fasol, Marco Rosa and Mauro De Iorio.
HIDDEN WORK >>>
Hidden Works are works that can be customised by the collector who can choose three or more modern and contemporary artists who will meet in the same work. Alternatively, these works can arise from the random drawing of three or more names of contemporary artists.
Hidden Works in public and chaotic situations such as exhibitions and biennials are presented ‘hidden’, but we could also say ‘protected’ from our present. The hyper-digitized society makes everything, every content, the coloured surface of our screen. We can know and have everything at once, we live a continuous ‘preview of reality’. The information society, described by the philosopher Byung Chul Han, changes our perception of the world with very serious consequences. The ‘hidden’ works reactivate our imagination, the surprise effect and the value of waiting. Hidden Works ‘resist’ the degeneration of our present and allow us to recapture our time and have a profound experience of reality.
The works are always concealed with “emergency packaging”. Only the collector who buys the work can decide whether and how to open it: the work can be opened immediately, for example during a fair, in the manner the collector chooses, or never opened at all. The work that is kept hidden maintains a constant focus and tension. The responsibility for “how and when to see the work” is thus transferred from the artist to the collector.
These works can be defined as the ‘non-things’ Byung Chul Han talks about: they are objects that are simply born from a single piece of information (the artists’ choice). Since 2009, Luca Rossi has been developing an exhausting daily critical work that has allowed him to know how to ‘distill’ the essence and attitude of the main modern and contemporary artists. The challenge of bringing together very different artists leads to completely unexpected formal and conceptual solutions. In this way, Hidden Works also reacts to the standardized ‘fashionable’ languages that characterize contemporaneity.
This critical and creative ‘gamble’ seems to respond to the new frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, suggesting the possibility of a space of resistance unknown to its author himself. In fact, such a gamble takes ‘Luca Rossi’ to formal and conceptual places that he himself could never have reached without the need for different artists to dialogue and meet.
HIDDEN WORK
(M. Pistoletto + J. Koons + D. Hirst + M. Creed + MSCHF)
“Holy Grail”, 60x80x20 cm, Luca Rossi 2023.
In the work, five artists consistently come together: only one of the 50 balls in the work is an original work by Damien Hirst. It is up to the public and the collector to identify which one it is. The title refers to the scene in the film Indiana Jones (1989) where the protagonist has to choose between many possibilities which one is the Holy Grail used by Jesus during the Last Supper.
The viewer finds himself inside the work, as in Michelangelo Pistoletto’s mirror paintings. Artificial light on the 50 balls restores the ephemeral nature of these ‘objects of desire’ as it does in the works of Jeff Koons, and in particular in the work with the vacuum cleaners. The work refers to Martin Creed’s work with several balls distributed in space, and a pedal board allows the light to be switched on and off, a second reference to Creed’s work (lights on/lights off). Only one of the 50 balls is actually a work by Damien Hirst, but as is often the case with the work of the MSCHF collective, we don’t know which is the original work and it is up to the viewer to see it (Museum of Forgeries).
Luca Rossi is the most interesting personality in Italy
Since reading Luca Rossi’s blog I no longer deal with the practice but only with the theory of art
Luca Rossi is the new “Vanessa Beecroft”
Since reading Luca Rossi’s blog I no longer deal with the practice but only with the theory of art
Luca Rossi is the new “Vanessa Beecroft”
CRITICISM, THE FIGHT, THE FUTURE: LUCA ROSSI
In the Italian contemporary art scene there is a figure of considerable interest. Luca Rossi–artist/ collective, critic, curator, and blogger–is a controversial personality who works in anonymity, as some kind of Anonymous of the Art System. In Luca Rossi’s philosophy, the ego no longer exists because anyone can be Luca Rossi, at the same time that the “critical process”, the virtual space of the Internet, and the real context no longer have boundaries and blend into one.
“Luca Rossi” was born in 2009 from the severe critical context that he himself triggered. “Evolved Ikea”, “Young Indiana Jones Syndrome”, “Smart-relativism”, “Grandparents and Parents Foundation”, are just some of the keywords around which Luca Rossi has been developing a daily critical work. Critical concepts that affect an entire generation of artists forced to confront a century as dense as the twentieth century. This critical work has allowed him to anticipate a fusion and confusion of roles that we can now see very well in a role that we could define as “spectauthor”. Luca Rossi’s unconventional projects arise from a manipulation of information that is treated exactly as if it were clay to be moulded, long before the concept of “fake news” became so important in the public debate. The nature of his works experiences a fibrillation between imagination, conventional object, direct experience and mediated experience.
Today individuals experience a sort of “non-experience” in the sense that they spend most of their time surfing the “network”, producing a “new memory-without memory” or a “passive and a-critical assimilation” into the system. Luca Rossi knows this well. He constantly reminds us of the history of art and ideas, of our past, of what it means to be critical and active, struggling to preserve one’s own authenticity and originality in the great McDonald that is our contemporary world.
Many curators and artists, both in Italy and Europe, have been following Luca’s work with great excitement. By now Luca is considered the only critical voice that “stands out” in the current Italian landscape.
It is worrisome that Luca’s work has yet to be recognized by institutions and organizations, despite receiving the acknowledgement of the public and many curators and artists. This says a lot about what the value that the Italian system places on the “real artist”. The Italian contemporary landscape has been dragging itself down for more than 10 years, producing artists who “copy and paste”, endless repetitions of projects signed by the same names, and decreeing the end of contemporary art.
Luca Rossi is an independent author for which anyone can be “Luca Rossi”. In this way everyone is stimulated to a new sense of opportunity and responsibility.
Luca Rossi started the blog Whitehouse as a platform for art criticism, information, and art-related projects in 2009. Major representatives of the art world have participated in the blog, contributing to its popularity. Luca Rossi has written in social networks and specialized magazines like “Flash Art”, Artribune.com, Exibart.com and Huffington Post with lucid criticism and originality.
Luca Rossi was defined “the most interesting personality” in Italy by Fabio Cavallucci, and “the new Vanessa Beecroft” by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio. In 2011 Alfredo Cramerotti (curator of “Manifesta” and Museum Director Mostyn, Wales) wrote: “To be honest, I’m not Roberta (a 2011 project by Luca Rossi) made me think more than dozens of other projects I have seen “live”. In 2013 the art critic Angela Vettese stated that since he read Luca Rossi’s blog she stopped devoting himself to the practice of art but only to theory. In December 2015 a comparison between Mario Perniola and Luca Rossi was published in the magazine Alfabeta2. In 2017 an article from Artribune magazine summarizes Luca Rossi’s work starting in 2009.
Selected official and unofficial art projects:
Mart, Rovereto (2009); Whitney Biennial, New York (2010); Biennale di Venezia (2013, 2015, 2019, 2022); Abbazia di Sénanque (2013); Gamec di Bergamo (2014); Boros Collection, Berlino (2015); Serpentine Gallery, Londra (2015); Fondazione Prada, Milano (2016); Hotel Helvetia, Porretta Terme (2016); Quirinale, Roma (2017); SMACH 2017, Val Badia (2017); New Museum, New York, (2017, 2021); Tate Modern, Londra (2017, 2021); National Gallery of Scotland (2018); Centrale Fies/ Manifesta 12, 7800 Project (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, #OccupySandretto (2018); ICA Milano (2019); Gagosian Gallery Rome (2019); Venezuelan Pavilion (2019); Prada Foundation Venice (2019); My Arbor My Art, MyArbor (2019); Palazzo Strozzi (2021,2022); Hangar Bicocca (2021); Bourse de Commerce (2021); Pompidou Museum (2022); MoMA Museum (2022); Documenta 15 (2022); Lisson gallery (2022), Galleria SIX (2023).