Riccardo Crespi Gallery is delighted to present Vermilion Glow Bleeds Rust, a solo show by Italian artist Ludovica Gioscia. Preview 25th September 2013, 6.30pm (The artist will attend to the Preview)

The title of the show is evocative of the illogical and hyperbolic names of certain products: in particular those of cosmetics. For years, the artist has been manically collecting materials connected to the phenomena she researches; for instance Paninaro paraphernalia, make-up adverts, wallpaper and magazines.

Ludovica Gioscia’s main interests are retail and social anthropology and her works are hybrids of the two within an aesthetic of mass entertainment. Strongly influenced by the baroque, Gioscia’s work explores hedonism throughout history and looks at our relationship with consumption: from our compulsive relationship with destruction, which allows the cycle of consumerism to unfold, to the media’s pornification, in which scatological visuals are on the rise.

The main body of the show is composed by a new “campscape”, Description de l'Egypte, which borrows its title from a collection of litographs compiled by artists and scientists sent by Napoleon to document ancient and modern Egypt between 1798 and 1801. The new campscape also draws inspiration from JG Ballard’s 1981 novel Hello America, in which America’s landscape is portrayed as barren and desolated. In the book, banks and shopping malls are submerged beneath a desert of rust formed by the erosion of decades of abandoned cars.

In Description de l'Egypte Ludovica Gioscia elaborates on the structure of the campscape as a superdisplay and suggests the new island-like structure as a form of contemporary archaeology. The materials used to build the island-like structure include tables that the artist has been using in her studio for years. In consequence, they have multiple layers of printing, holes and marks of labour on them into which Gioscia has inserted other objects that originate from some of her collections, such as the packaging archive.

The elements are introduced into the battered furniture in a surgical manner and resemble organs: Gioscia’s increasing impulse to relate the human body to waste is driven by her understanding that the act of consumption cannot be divorced from the act of eating, digesting and expelling.

In the upstairs space Ludovica presents a new wallpaper which she has designed and printed in her signature style, in which appropriated imagery is re-digested and re-branded. The motif is based on the abandoned structures that form the industrial archaeological landscape surrounding Calasetta in Sardegna (Fondazione MACC), where the artist will be in residency shortly after the show.

Ludovica Gioscia, born in Rome in 1977, lives and works in London. Some exhibitions: 2013 Liquid Sky Fits Heaven, House of Peroni, London; I killed my father…., Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York, curated by Invisible-Exports 2012, Forecasting Ouroboros, MACRO, Rome; Cast Contemporaries, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgo, curated by Chris Dorsett and Margaret Stewart; Preposterous, La Scatola Gallery, London; Product Placement, Angus-Hughes Gallery, London, curated by Mark Selby; Dreaming Beauties, Galleria Riccardo Crespi, Milan; Material, Salon 94, New York, curated by Duro Olowu 2011 Two Peacocks, Gallery North, Newcastle; Never Talk to Strangers, Edel Assanti, London, curated by Charlotte Artus; Apocalypstick, The Nunnery Gallery, London; The Shape of Things, Ferrate Gallery, Tel-Aviv  2010 Paninaro, The Agency, London; Wild Boys, Vitrine Gallery, London; Going International, Flag Art Foundation, New York; Carte Blanche, Analix Forever, Geneva, curated by Michele Robecchi; Murals, Fundació Miró, Barcelona, curated by Martina Millà; Playboy Bunny Redux, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, curated by Eric C. Shiner, Aaron Baker and Ned West  2009 Papered Portraits, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Tiger Economy, Sara Tecchia Roma New York & The Agency, New York and London 2008 The Krautcho Klub,176 London, curated by 176 / Zabludowicz collection and Anna-Catharina Gebbers; The Agency, London; Wanderlust, Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok; Il Rimedio Perfetto, Galleria Riccardo Crespi, Milan, curated by Marco Tagliafierro 2007 The Weasel, South London Gallery, curated by Kit Hammonds; Yourlineismakingmesowetiloveit, Sara Tecchia Roma New York, New York; Sequence & Repetition, Jerwood Space, London 2006 Are you experienced?, FuoriUso 06 – Ex Mercato Ortofrutticolo, Pescara / WAX, Budapest / MNAC, Bucharest. Travelling show curated by Paolo Falcone and Nicolas Bourriaud.

Riccardo Crespi Gallery
Via Mellerio,1
Milan 20123 Italy
Ph. +39 028 9072491
info@riccardocrespi.com
www.riccardocrespi.com

Opening hours
Moday - Saturday
From 11.00am to 1.00pm and from 3.00pm to 7.30pm