From Cindy Sherman to Francesco Vessoli

Liviana Martin

The works exhibited in this show belong to the art collection owned by the lawyer Iannaccone, which includes more than 150 works by 80 contemporary artists, established figures such as Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Francesco Vezzoli, or young emerging artists.
Through the interpretative filter of art, the show addresses themes linked to social issues such as multiculturalism, gender identity, the relationship between innovation and tradition, reflection on the body.
Each of the 11 sections tells a unique story: each room is like a stage in a journey that links different visions and perspectives; different languages ​​that converge on similar themes.
The figure of the clown looking at us from the exhibition brochure, with a pink wig, blue eyes, coloured cheekbones, surrounded by blue feathers, is Cindy Sherman’s mask: taken from the Clown series, it is an important point of reference for a research on female identity conducted by the artist.
The representation of the female body as an object of desire represented by the media is the main theme of the series Untitled film stills (1977-80), in which Sherman deals with the passivity of the female body. The artist stages herself as the protagonist of fictional film stills, representing and overturning the female stereotypes imposed by the media in America in the late Seventies.
The monographic room dedicated to Sherman introduces a series of themes explored in the following rooms, through a complex interweaving of voices, from Francesco Vezzoli, to Nan Goldin, to many others.
Vezzoli is an artist who looks at cinema, theatre and television; his works often portray stars, icons of our times, assembling quotes from the history of art with the myths of pop culture. In the work L’amore: Anna Magnani loves Roberto Rossellini, where the world-famous Italian diva shows her tormented, hollow face, from which crocheted tears flow. In the portrait La Signora Bruschino (a reference to the work of Gioacchino Rossini) this time tears flow on the character’s face, in metallic embroidery, in the form of musical notes.
Tears are the distinctive sign of Vezzoli’s photographic portraits: green tears, tears that form a lake, tears formed by precious stones. In some works, such as those on display, he uses embroidery, a thread that sews together the public and private dimensions of the character, often difficult to reconcile.
If Vezzoli uses a refined irony, the American Nan Goldin uses a documentary style to tell the story of life in all its crudeness. Trixie On The Cot shows us a transsexual, in a ball gown, with large red flowers, a white bow in her black hair, sitting on a camp bed in a squalid environment, lit by a red lamp. Trixie smokes and massages her foot as if she had danced for a long time. But the image does not arouse joy or empathy, it keeps us at a distance, like the secret thoughts of the protagonist. Jimmy Paulette and Taboo! in the bathroom, NYC shows us two drag queens, Jimmy turned towards us looks invitingly, Taboo from behind shows off a showy necklace.
Goldin is an established photographer who has portrayed glimpses of life in the time of AIDS, revealing private moments of the gay and transgender world; her photos embody gender ambiguity, they are intimate and intense portraits of the New York underground scene between the 70s and 80s, which never fall into moralistic judgment.
Always the reflection on the body and identity but through the portrait is the privileged theme of artists such as Francesco Gennari or Michael Borremans.
The portrait, in the history of art, has always been a means of celebrating the power or psychological introspection of the character depicted. Portraits were commissioned by aristocrats, sovereigns or religious people to affirm their authority and their social status. The artist captured in their face the feelings, passions, emotions. In contemporary art, the portrait continues to represent a means of reflecting on the fluid identity and complexity of the human soul.
Francesco Gennari, in his works, analyzes himself, starting from an everyday object to transfigure it into a universal element.
In the self-portraits on display, where the author depicts himself revealing only his body from the torso down, the colour of his bright yellow sweater becomes a solar eclipse (Self-portrait as a solar eclipse), an orange garment of which only a triangular segment can be seen becomes a sunset (Self-portrait as a triangular sunset). His cloak becomes a night, studded with stars, or a fragment of the Universe.
The artist talks to us about himself, about his emotional experience, attributing intimate and symbolic meanings to the clothes used in the photos, with the desire to transcend the limits of existence.
The Belgian artist Michael Borremans, who uses painting, video, installations in his artistic practice, introduces sensations of tension and ambiguity in his portraits. In his works, the artist builds enigmatic and suspended scenarios, in which the protagonists convey a sense of uneasiness. In The Veils a couple is divided by two transparent veils, thin veils that can transform into an insurmountable barrier. The subjects, a man and a woman, are wrapped in an atmosphere of silence and mystery and the viewer is suspended in an interpretation that lends itself to multiple meanings. In the diptych Resemblance Borremans portrays his hands, in a reflection on creativity and the role of the artist.

An entire room is dedicated to the visionary world of Kiki Smith in dialogue with a young Italian artist, Giulia Cenci. Both have developed a deep interest in the body, matter, the relationship between the human being and the world of nature. Cenci’s work is a fusion of organic and artificial elements, where the boundary between biological and technological dissolves. Treesome is a sculpture that assembles parts of animal masks with wooden trunks, almost a residue of an apocalyptic catastrophe. Here, organic and synthetic are aggregated in compositions from a post-human scenario. The sensation that comes from it is of fragility, of reflection on the transformation of matter in an era of environmental crisis. Kiki Smith instead links her research to religious or mythical themes; she investigates the iconic figures of the Virgin Mary, Eve, Mary Magdalene or Lilith and brings animal presences such as birds, wolves or goats closer to their bodies, in order to highlight the centuries-old relationship between the female figure and the animal world. On display, among others, the sculpture of Eve and the large sculpture of the Guardian, in a hieratic pose, expression of a dialogue between the sacred and the earthly, an enigmatic presence that seems to watch over us.
Authors such as Paola Pivi reflect on the relationship between man and animal: her photos that immortalize a solitary donkey on a boat in the middle of the sea, or a leopard asleep in a strange posture, cause us disquiet and disorientation.
Animals, always powerful symbols in the history of art, are able to give us emotions or make us reflect on our human condition. The analogies between human characteristics and animal properties are part of our daily speech, when for example we say: “You are smart like a fox, you are strong like a lion…” Pivi uses images of animals out of scale or inserted in unusual contexts, mixing reality and imagination (what is that donkey doing on the boat? And is the leopard just asleep in that strange pose?) The animal is the mirror of our desires and our deepest fears.
Problems more attentive to political and social themes are present in the room that hosts, among others, Adrian Paci, Shirin Neshat, Banksy. Works that highlight both cohesion and solidarity and tensions within social groups.
In the acrylic on board entitled The Wedding , divided into six almost monochrome scenes, Paci portrays characters and rites linked to ceremonies of his native country, Albania: the bride, with her head covered by a white veil, relatives, women on one side, men on the other, inside a room without precise references. Paci insists on the expressions of the characters, on their gestures, on the poor everyday objects present in the environment. From the amateur film of his wedding, the artist took some frames from which he obtained these pictorial scenes, narration of stories of daily life that turn into a metaphor of collective living.
The Iranian Shirin Neshat explores the role of women in the Islamic context. The protagonists of her works embody the struggle for freedom and self-determination, denied by an oppressive patriarchal regime. Speechless is a black and white photographic portrait that is part of the Women of Allah series, created between 1993 and 1997. It depicts the beautiful face of a woman who wears a weapon instead of earrings and is covered with phrases from poems by contemporary Iranian women writers. The poetess prays to her brothers to let her participate in social life and not leave her alone at home.
The woman in the photo seems to be submissive to religion but her sad and restless eyes identify her as a victim. The title communicates the sense of absolute silence that surrounds the image: the woman would like to speak but she is not allowed to. The phrases on her face are the words she cannot say. All the recent facts about women’s rebellion within the family and society Iranian are condensed in this image.
The enigmatic English street artist Banksy is present in this exhibition with the statuette of a Mouse, which appears to us with a backpack, hat and paintbrush, an image of the artist who works in the shadows to denounce injustices and give voice to minorities. It is a message of artistic freedom, the power of street art of which Banksy is one of the most famous exponents, which escapes any attempt at control by official art. A challenge against conventions.
Ballerina, a bronze sculpture, re-proposes the famous Degas ballerina in a tutu, who in a disconcerting way wears a gas mask and dances on garbage, a powerful visual denunciation of the ecological disasters caused to the environment by man.
As the councillor for culture of the Municipality of Milan says, the exhibition “is an invitation to lose yourself in the artists’ imaginations, to let yourself be transported by the evocative power of the works, to observe our time with a new gaze”.

From Cindy Sherman to Francesco Vezzoli
80 contemporary artists
Milan, Palazzo Reale, 7 March-4 May 2025