David LaChapelle per Giacomo Ceruti:
Nomad in a Beautiful Land
Curated by Denis Curti
Fondazione Brescia Musei (Brescia Musei Foundation),
La Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo di Brescia
Piazza Moretto, 4, 25121 Brescia BS, Italy
from February 14 to November 12, 2023
Brescia Musei Foundation presents a new commission from American photographer David Lachapelle, inspired by the paintings of Ceruti’s “Padernello Cycle.”
"David LaChapelle's ability to synthesize always surprises me. We had a lot of discussions about this project and David confessed some concern at the beginning . That of being up to the comparison with Giacomo Ceruti. Then the decision to take a side step. Comparisons can be devastating. Hence the idea of "building" strong critical thinking. All aimed at the contemporary. On the exaggerations of luxury. On the differences of social classes. This is how Gated community was born, a powerful story. A cruel and sincere rendering, capable of getting straight to everyone's heart."
Denis Curti, curator of the exhibition
From the Giornale di Brescia article
Misery and Nobility: Ceruti's art meets David LaChapelle's shots
by Sarah Polotti
"David LaChapelle , one of the best-known photographers and resident between Hawaii and Los Angeles, has taken up the challenge of the Brescia Musei Foundation to fill the hole that the works of the eighteenth-century painter are leaving in the spaces of the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo during the days of the great exhibition «Miseria and Nobility» dedicated to Giacomo Ceruti.
The result is a large site-specific work visible in the halls of the city's exhibition venue: «Nomad in a beautiful land» tells of social inequalities in a direct , artificial and polite way (thus picking up on Pitocchetto's legacy). The image reproduces a series of homeless tents lined up outside the LACMA (Los Angeles museum) decorated with the classic logos and patterns of the best-known fashion houses, from Burberry to Dior, from Louis Vuitton to Gucci.
The idea, the representatives of Brescia Musei and the curator of the installation Denis Curti told during the press conference, came to the artist after hearing the news of 750 million dollars in funding to LACMA and after noticing the homeless tent city in the spaces behind the museum. To underline even more the social gap and the contradiction of the contemporary world (with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer), he decided to recreate a modern Rodeo Drive, or a dystopian via Monte Napoleone, to focus on the elitist abundance and on the great fragility"