Maurizio Anzeri at BALTIC, Gateshead

Posted in Exhibitions / Openings / Signings, Eyecandy, Hair & Fabric by Suzanne on June 21st, 2011 | BBC Wikipedia

Nadia by Maurizio Anzeri, 2010, image courtesy of BALTIC - click to enlarge

From June 25 onwards, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts in Gateshead will be presenting recent works by London-based Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri whose intricate embroidery and needlework has been gaining great popularity and high-profile collectors since his 2009 solo show at London’s Riflemaker.

Despite male artists like Seb Patane, John Stezaker or Angelo Filomeno creating similar darkly surreal, psychologically dense, and sweetly morbid collage works with ballpoint pens respectively photography and silk, Anzeri is still a pioneer in a genre strongly dominated by women like Julie Cockburn, Hinke Schreuders, Flore Gardner and Erin Endicott, to name a few.

Anzeri's clear focus on a geometric narrative, his obsessive attention to detail and his love affair with outsider art and ready-mades have made it possible for him to achieve authenticity, to create an aura by reworking the epitome of Walter Benjamin’s “technical reproduction” - the photograph.

Family Day by Maurizio Anzeri, 2009, image courtesy of BALTIC - click to enlarge

Using found photographs of unknown origins as his canvas, Anzeri stitches new anatomical and physiognomical realities onto the faces of our collective subconscious past. The outcome is often unnerving and psychedelic, sometimes fetishistic and occult, and always very tactile and playful.

Anzeri says that:

“There are no rules other than I always leave one or both eyes open. Nothing is bigger in my head than a face, it’s the best landscape we can look at.”

On Wednesday evening, June 29, the BALTIC invites the public to a free conversation where Anzeri will be discussing his work with Alessandro Vincentelli, BALTIC’s curator of Exhibitions and Research.

Details below.

Angelo by Maurizio Anzeri, 2010, image courtesy of BALTIC - click to enlarge