The Lia Rumma Gallery in Naples will present the complete installation of VB52, one of the latest projects by the artist Vanessa Beecroft, which includes a large transparent table, used for the performance given at Castello di Rivoli in 2003, and a video – lasting two hours– taken from the same performance.
The video features thirty-two women seated at a table – noblewomen belonging to the Savoy dynasty, female members of the artist’s family, performers and models – who take part in a sumptuous banquet for seven hours running. With the customary detachment that is a distinguishing feature of the female figures chosen by the artist, the women’s gestures are slow as they stare into space and taste the food served to them distractedly
In VB52, the focus on details of colour, one of the central aspects of Beecroft’s work, follows a pre-established code. The courses and the drinks appear upon the scene following a succession of monochromatic tones which range from white to red to green to orange to purple...The banquet also provides the artist with an opportunity to compare her work with the art of the past, transferring Renaissance and Baroque imagery into a contemporary setting. In addition to these elements, there is another aspect which characterises the whole of Beecroft’s work - the conflictual relationship with food. In the earliest phases of her career, the artist presented a sort of “book of food” in which she included a painstaking list of all the types of food eaten day by day, specifying both the quantity and the colour. In VB52 this obsession becomes a sort of codified ritual.
