Jordan Anderson: At the beginning of the exhibition, we’re greeted with a piece of your work featuring a woman on a magazine cover with glitter tears running down her face. Please tell us more about your decision to start things off in this way. Is it in reference to the tragedy of fame ?
Francesco Vezzoli: I would call it, “The Tragedy of Fast Fame.” There’s nothing wrong with fame per se but very often celebrity lives are so volatile and suddenly losing all privileges and attention of an audience can be extremely painful. Strangely enough, these days, everyone badly wants a piece of the celebrity cake. Most people have no obligations whatsoever to show their private lives because objectively they are not public figures. Despite that they choose to expose themselves and their lives to small/medium audiences through social media. [In doing so] they don’t gain any objective advantage on the contrary, they just create a useless prison made of fallacious mirrors.
JA: A lot of your work analyses the power and impact of pop culture, and one might say Iolas was one of the key figures in the artistic society during his time – but what impact did the disregard of his accomplishments throughout history have on the work selected for the exhibit ? If there was any impact.
FV: The powerful players of the world of contemporary art today have a big complex towards figures like Iolas. He was able to merge harmoniously, culture, glamour, business and serious art. Today it’s mostly cheap glamour, pushiness and boring art. His impact in history is objective. He gave [Andy] Warhol his first show, he gave [Edward] Kienholz his first show and his cultural radar was infallible. On top of his instinct for new artists, he became the most important dealer for european surrealists and finally he invented the concept of the global gallery ages before Gagosian opened his first one. I’m embarrassed to say [despite all this] he is still paying a price for his eccentricity and his sexual orientation and they still don’t take him seriously enough.
JA: Your work often features a mixture of elements of the future as well as the past. In creating pieces specifically for this exhibit, was there any intention in shifting the perception of how Iolas was seen and how you hope for him to be seen?
FV: In his magnificent houses and exhibitions he successfully merged his culture, his roots and the most avant garde artists. He was a pioneer. In a moment like this we need to be aware of our political history, to avoid the mistakes of the past and we must be aware of our artistic history to avoid intellectual banality.
JA: The closing piece in the last room of the exhibition is a gold painted framed image of Alexander Iolas that features your glittered graffiti in the form of horns of his head. Can you tell us more about this? Was this a commentary on his character ?
FV: Absolutely yes. He may have been a manipulative character but all I care about is the glorious cultural productivity that he has left behind. He is the Diaghilev of all gallerists.
JA: There is a very early, small sculpture of yours on the mantelpiece from 1994. Can you explain this work?
FV: We must go back to my St Martin’s days in London. I used to do needlework inspired by the prostitute call cards that you could find then in public phone booths. It was my way of merging perversion and affection.
JA: God Is A Woman – a great title for your work, but also an Arianna Grande song. Tell us more about this and the other new sculptures in the show.
FV: All the new sculptures in the show are inspired by the fabulous interiors of Iolas’ mansions often photographed by Horst [P. Horst]. A true mixture of marble antiquities, gilded details, velvet sofa and slashed glittering Fontanas. In the private areas [there were] decadent bedrooms and closets full of intarsia fur coats and satin suits. I wish my art will one day be as daring as his life was.