LOS ANGELES, CA.- Swiss art dealer and renowned auctioneer Simon de Pury recently announced his latest venture, a new exhibition series titled de PURY presents… collaborating with international artists to stage exhibitions from their own studios. The second exhibition de PURY presents... Vanessa Beecroft launched on 25th August 2021 with the Anglo-Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft in her Los Angeles-based studio. Beecroft presents recent sculptures and paintings, started in 2016, of female figures and nudes.

Beecroft, largely known for her performances and large-scale photographs of them, has been working for over 30 years across performance, sculpture and paintings. Inspired by her upbringing in Italy, her practice has been informed by classical art and sculpture, and at the same time interrogates the male gaze and the societal pressures of being a woman.

For this exhibition, Beecroft has produced a series of figurative sculptures of women which the artist sees as an extension of her performances. Resembling Brancusi’s studio in Paris, the sculptures will be placed at various locations throughout her large studio, highlighting the relationship between the works and the space around them. These sculptures will be placed alongside large-scale paintings, a medium Beecroft hadn’t utilised for 20 years, expressing what she felt she couldn’t convey through her performances.

Simon de Pury comments: I have been a great admirer of Vanessa’s work ever since I first saw it at Jeffrey Deitch’s projects in New York in 1996. I then was mesmerised by the work she did for Kanye West, notably the Yeezus tour in Las Vegas in 2014. Kanye has been the first hip hop artist to build bridges to some of the greatest artists living today. Kanye and Vanessa continue to be close friends and while Vanessa was putting the finishing touches to this current exhibition, she was hearing Kanye working on his soon to be released new album in the gallery space next door which he has transformed into a recording studio. The group of works presented here is the strongest and most personal work that Vanessa has produced to date. I am incredibly excited to be able to present it as part of de PURY presents…

Vanessa Beecroft comments: Everything in my work is rooted in me—biographically and culturally. My roots, my visions, my issues are represented in my work. The sculptures and paintings capture what the performances cannot, they materialise the performances and translate them into objects.

I’ve always used painting as a medium since I was a student. In each performance there were elements of painting. I set the women in the space as if they were part of a Raphael linear perspective. I coloured their hair or skin as if they were paintings. When I finally started painting systematically in 2019, I locked myself in the studio for nine months and produced more than a hundred very large works.

A show in my studio is intimate and an ideal scenario as it allows me to add artworks as they are completed. It also allows for works to develop as the show progresses; more works will appear, as they are ready.