New York Times journalist Carol Vogel celebrates

Francesco Vezzoli upcoming shows in her article

The Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli has made a career

out of masterminding spectacles. There was the time at

the 2005 Venice Biennale when he created an old-fashioned

movie theater with pea-green velvet seats where he showed

his raunchy four-minute fantasy trailer for a “remake” of Gore

Vidal’s 1979 film “Caligula,” starring Courtney Love, Benicio

del Toro, Milla Jovovich and Helen Mirren.

Or when he transformed the Gagosian Gallery on 21st Street in

Chelsea two years ago into a kind of Gothic church, where he

displayed digital copies of old master Madonna and child paintings,

each with the faces of supermodels from the late 1970s and ’80s

Christie Brinkley, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell — set in

heavy gold frames that drooped at the bottom, Salvador Dali-like.

Now fans and foes can ready for a trilogy of fantastical exhibitions

under the umbrella title “The Trinity.” In May there will be “Galleria

Vezzoli,” at the Maxxi, the national museum for contemporary art

in Rome; in the fall “The Church of Vezzoli,” at MoMA PS 1 and in

the fall and winter, “Cinema Vezzoli,” at the Museum of

Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“They are three separate but related exhibitions examining different

aspects of his work,” said Giovanna Melandri, the president of Maxxi,

adding that its futuristic building, designed by Zaha Hadid, will be

transformed into an overdecorated 1800s-style museum that will

display 15 years of Mr. Vezzoli’s work. Perhaps even more ambitious

will be a reconstructed Romanesque-style church from Pisticci, a

small town in Southern Italy.

The church will be dismantled and transported by boat to PS1,

where it will be rebuilt in the courtyard. “It’s nearly 50 by 35

feet,” said Klaus Biesenbach, the director of PS1, who estimates

that it will take a month and a half to install. Inside the church

will be a program of performances and videos. The Museum of

Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will explore Mr. Vezzoli’s

passion for European cinema and Hollywood stardom. “Each

museum is doing one-third of the trinity,” Mr.Biesenbach

said. “All together it is a single conceptual art project.”

Source: nytimes.com