photo: KIOKU Keizo
Paradise Islands
| Artist | Angelo FILOMENO |
|---|---|
| Year | 2002 |
| Material/ Technique | embroidery on silk shantung stretched over canvas |
| Size/ Duration | H173 × W173cm |
| Copyright Notice | © Angelo FILOMENO |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2006（作品購入年月日：2006/03/31） |
| Description | Born in Ostuni, Italy in 1963. Lives and works in New York, USA. His father specialized in metalwork and his mother was a dressmaker. At the age of seven, he was apprenticed to a tailor, and learned the basics of sewing. After graduating from art college, he started working in the fashion industry. After moving to New York, he was engaged in the making of theatrical costumes. Early in 2000, he started creating works with embroidered images. Using sparkling materials such as threads of silk, gold and silver as well as crystals, he embroiders representational images of animals, plants, skulls, excrement and blood onto a decorative ground with swirling curved lines. They express Filomeno’s particular worldview wavering between life and death, brilliance and decadence. He participated in the 50th Venice Biennale in 2007. Currently dealing with sculpture, he is still broadening his range of activities. The surface of "Volcano" with elaborate embroideries on silk with silver threads and crystals sparkles in the light and enraptures us with its beauty. Looking at its decorative pattern, the viewer will see an emerging pelvis-like form outlined by undulating lines. As if flowing out of its center, a cascade of clustered garnets is sewn, and a pretty flower is embroidered beside it. They remind us of both volcano magma and women’s blood suggesting life and sex. In "Paradise Islands", on the other hand, a profile of a lake surrounded by rocky mountains is embroidered. On the lake are two brown islands. Looking at them closely, however, the viewer will see innumerable flies embroidered with silver threads flying around, and what first appeared to be islands at a distance are actually excrement. His macabre expression, which seems to be at the opposite end of luxurious beauty and ‘good’ and ‘honest’ images associated with embroidery, makes us feel unsettled. Life and tanatos, life and eros, beauty and ugliness, consciousness and unconsciousness are intricately intertwined. There, multi-level interpretation ranging over humans’ essential qualities is possible. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.