Press Release:
David LaChapelle’s major exhibition is currently on view, with a special installation at the Reggia di Venaria, in the Citroniera delle Scuderie Juvarriane. ​Atti Divini invites visitors to experience an expansive survey of work from the American photographer.
This new exhibition offers over 60 significant pieces from various periods of the artist’s image-making career. A transformative visual journey follows LaChapelle’s profound representation of humanity in and against nature before emerging into a totally new body of work set in a colorful paradise. LaChapelle’s thought-provoking point of view is represented in this program and presents the iconic works which contribute to his position as one of the world’s most influential artists.
Fully aware of the creative artifice, LaChapelle’s photographs are distinguished by their ability to relate and dialogue with the manifestations of western civilization over vast themes, from the classical renaissance to present day and beyond. Through his vast language of the image, LaChapelle’s body of work communicates the fears, obsessions, and desires of our contemporary society that increasingly elude easy categorisation.
Not to be missed are iconic works ​Rape of Africa (2009) which finds Naomi Campbell as Venus in a Botticelli-inspired scene set in the gold mine fields of Africa, and ​Showtime at the Apocalypse (2013), a portrait of the Kardashian family which renders not only the family itself, but our own fears, obsessions, and desires reflected in it. Also on display are the vivid and exciting series ​Land SCAPE (​ 2013), and ​Gas (2013), still-life projects where LaChapelle assembles ​found objects to create oil refineries and their interdependent gas stations before presenting them as relics in an earth reclaimed by nature. Central to the show is ​Deluge ​(2007), in which LaChapelle contemporizes Michelangelo’s 16th-century mural from the Sistine Chapel. Later works like ​Awakened ​(2007) and ​Seismic Shift (2012) reveal apt scenes facing divinity in our modern world.
Exclusive to this exhibition, “Atti Divini” introduces unseen work from LaChapelle’s newest series ​New World ​(2017-2019)​, which follows the artist’s awe for the sublime and a quest for spirituality in scenes staged throughout a tropical utopia.
DAVID LACHAPELLE: ATTI DIVINI is on view 14 June 2019 - 06 January 2020, Reggia di Venaria
Reggia di Venaria
Citroniera delle Scuderie Juvarriane
Piazza della Repubblica, 4
Venaria Reale (TO)
