Angelo Filomeno at Galerie Lelong

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
I hope you've had a wonderful summer, as good as mine...I'm not back in the city yet but I can't wait to see the next Filomeno's show, opening on September 10th! Italian born, Angelo Filomeno lives and works in New York. I've discovered his work on the 52nd occasion of the Venice biennale in 2007. At this time his work was showed in an entire room as a sort of memento mori made from silk, embroidered and bejewelled.

Mostly made on silk, his embroidered works are fantastical, kind of magical and surreal in imagery. He makes his works with a sewing machine - his mother teached him how to embroidered and he worked as an apprentice for a local trailor at the age of seven - and hoop onto the fabric and then streched over linen. I've never a seen a work like that before. His technique is simply amazing and it's his own signature. It looks like a painting but it's more like a "Haute Couture" painting!

He's fascinated with the macabre and a strong and deep interest in the darker side of the human condition: mortality, isolation, compulsion, fragility... Most of the characters that he represents are skeletons, skulls, creatures and organic forms from afterlife... Crystals and semi precious gemstones that are sprayed on the canvas reinforce the impression of a vision of a dream, a funeral and frightening dream. It gives to the work the magical and mystical aspect.

The Marquis and A Bearded Dominatrix with A Cake in the Oven is his second exhibition at the gallery since the first one in 2008. His last exhibition at the Galerie Anne de Villepoix, in 2009 in Paris, showed us a new way of working: embroidering on recycled burlap-a fabric instead of silk as the main material. Apparently, he used the same technique for making his works in his newest exhibition. I guess we'll see other skeletons and forms from afterlife, death figures who are however still thinking to their lives...But I don't have any other clues!!

For those who really love allegories, thoughts about life and death, magic and myths in art... don't hesitate for one moment and go see this exhibition!! It's glamour, sophisticated and you're gonna love it. Remember: opening on September 10th!!