Laurent Grasso, Portrait of a Young Man
  Bass Museum of Art, Miami (USA). 29.10.2011 - 12.02.2012
 

   Motive Gallery, Amsterdam (Netherlands). 12.03 - 29.04.2011

E-Flux Press release

The Bass Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of works by Paris-based artist Laurent Grasso. The exhibition, titled Portrait of a Young Man, builds on Grasso's reflections on the Renaissance, a time when the fields of science and the arts actively informed one another. In order to explore this theme within his oeuvre, Grasso carefully selected historic works from the Renaissance and Baroque collection of the Bass Museum of Art to create a dialogue with his own works from a wide range of media, all of which investigate a notion of history that is neither linear nor cyclical.

For example, the exhibition includes a series of intricate paintings titled Studies into the past. These paintings incorporate select imagery meticulously reproduced from historic paintings while simultaneously integrating depictions of miraculous phenomena such as eclipses, floating rocks and the northern lights. Other works central to the exhibition include a series of neons inspired by Grasso's interest in Galileo Galilei. One of these works, 1610 (2011), was made especially for the exhibition; it transforms a sketch by Galileo of a star constellation into neon, referencing the Vatican's recent rehabilitation of the scientist. Through placing these works alongside paintings from the 15th century, Grasso provocatively alludes to literal and figurative connections between the past and present.
 

French
 

© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2011. All Rights Reserved

Exhibition 29 October 2011 - 12 February 2012. Bass Museum of Art, 2100 Collins Avenue - Miami Beach, Florida 33139. Tel.: 305.673.7530. Opening hours : Wednesday-Sunday 12-5pm. Closed Mondays-Tuesdays.

International past exhibitions 2011