Angelo Accardi's Pop Surrealism on display at Milan's Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Angelo Accardi brings his artistic vision to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan with the exhibition Art Crimes, asite-specific installation of canvases, videos, design and sculptures to be held April 3-28, 2024 in the Roman Forum Hall. Aiming to overcome the hierarchies between high and pop culture through an exhibition composed entirely of previously unseen works, Accardi intends to propose a renewed and daring confrontation between the great Renaissance tradition and the contemporary languages of Pop Surrealism.

Accardi “plunders” the preparatory cartoon of Raphael’s School of Athens, kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, reinterpreting it through the deforming lens and irreverent language of Pop Surrealism. The result is a contemporary artistic pantheon, where Duchamp, Bacon, Velázquez, Dalí, Warhol, Cattelan and Picasso join the artists portrayed by Raphael, introducing playful elements into an alienating journey capable of surprising the viewer. It is since the early 2000s, when he made the Misplaced series, that he has introduced the figure of the ostrich into his works as a metaphor for the indefinite fear of liquid society.

"Art Crimes is a visual investigation of intellectual theft in art," explains curator Nino Florenzano. “Each work is born from another: art is a timeless dialogue in which the boundaries between inspiration, homage and appropriation dissolve. From Leonardo to Duchamp, Picasso to Bacon, the artistic gesture is often an act of subtraction and transformation. Each masterpiece is a trace that regenerates over time. Art feeds on quotation and transformation: each artist reworks the past, steals fragments of ideas and reinvents them. As Inspector Clouseau investigates these impossible thefts, the evidence multiplies. While Cattelan revisits the concept of the ready-made, Picasso is inspired by African masks, creating a language that revolutionizes the representation of the human face. Socrates, immersed in dialogue with Artificial Intelligence, confronts a knowledge that does not think, but learns and reworks, a reflection of the past transformed into an algorithm. These thefts are acts of creation, where each new vision builds on the previous one, leaving Clouseau to chase an enigma that will never end.”

Angelo Accardi's Pop Surrealism on display at Milan's Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana

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