Francesco Vezzoli uses the painstaking technique of embroidery to combine symbols of mass media with the heterogeneous cultural references of his childhood. Vezzoli came to the international art scene in the 90s with his celebrity saturated videos. Casting Courtney Love, Helen Mirren, and Bianca Jagger amongst others in his satirical remakes of advertising campaigns, the artist spotlighted the increasingly fraught economics of contemporary art and everyday life. His embroidered works, referencing the domestic lives of women and their social millieu, indulge Vezzoli's penchant for glamour, nostalgia and intelligent tragicomic clashes of high and low brow. Vezzoli remarks "we live in a very baroque and surreal moment, despite the fact that we're aiming to be correct and moderate."
Read MoreIn 2009 spectacle, consumerism, and art met again when Vezzoli staged a fake fragrance launch at Gagosian Gallery, complete with a manufactured bottle, a series of embroideries of famous female artists, and a commercial starring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams and directed by Roman Polanski. His A-list collaborations have been featured in solo exhibitions of the artist at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Ginevra (1999), Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (2002), New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2002), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2004), Tate Modern in London (2006), and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2007). His work has also been included in major group exhibitions like the Istanbul Bienali (1999), Liverpool Biennial (2002), São Paulo Bienal (2004), Venice Biennale (2005 and 2007), Whitney Biennial (2006), and Performa 07. He currently lives and works in Milan.
