On the ground floor Lia Rumma Gallery in Milan, the performance VB70 will be given to mark the opening of the exhibition. About ten nude models, body-statues with slow, fragmented movements, will perform among marble bases, blocks of uncut stone and new sculptures depicting female bodies, creating a single, striking sculptural group. The relationship between the transitory nature of the performance - calibrated yet fleeting - and the polished stillness of the sculptures is the common thread that also runs through the latest events created by Vanessa Beecroft.This turning point in her work is completely consistent with her previous projects which began in 2008 when, in the apse of the Church of the Spasimo in Palermo, 27 models covered in white mingled with 13 plaster casts, giving rise to a stunning tableau vivant imbued with icy pathos. By pursuing this theme in her subsequent works with her customary attention to formal detail, this turning point marks a new formulation of the relationship with the history of art and its infinite wealth of beauty and evocative power.Beecroft also conducts an acute investigation of the body, beauty and female identity. There is a lurking temptation to strike a celebratory note or to create an atmosphere of rhetorical monumentality due to the preciousness of the materials chosen for the performance. However, this risk is shattered by the painful incompleteness of the fragments, the assembly of the various marble inserts that virtually become a collage, and by the way the sculptures are perched, elegantly yet precariously, on the columns.
To complete the event, the upper floors of the gallery contain works in marble, fragments and busts in vivid colours. Sodalite blue, Macaubas sky blue, lapis lazuli, Rosa Portogallo (Portuguese pink marble), Belgian black, Statuary white, green onyx and French red ochre embody the intensity of the variations and chromatic choices with which the artist tinges all her refined backdrops.
