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Vanessa Beecroft

1969

Vanessa Beecroft, a contemporary Italian artist who works in the gap between art and life resulting work which is neither performance nor documentary but something inbetween, her live events are recorded through photography and film, to be exhibited as documentation of the performances and as separate works of art.  Beecroft has become known for pieces involving up to 20 vaguely similar women wearing underwear, high heels (or trainers) maybe pantyhose or wigs, and not much else, to produce work which has an athropological logic: the performers and their costumes usually centre from the city in which the performance is taking place. 

Beecroft makes contemporary versions of the complex figurative compositions that challenge painters; she sets up a structure for the participants in her live events to create their own composition, presenting themselves according to their own internalized aesthetic system.

The performances are existential encounters between models and audience, their shame and their expectations. Each performance is made for a specific location and often references the political, historical, or social associations of the place where it is held. Beecroft`s first exhibition was VB01, in Milan , 1993, in which she presented a series of drawings along with the past eight years of her Food Diary.

In October 2005, Beecroft staged a performance during the opening of the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. For the same event, Beecroft placed models on the shelves next to Louis Vuitton bags. Beecroft has had solo exhibitions and performances, internationally including the ICA, London, Guggenheim Museum, New York and Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles.

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