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PARTHENOGENESIS: ANGELO MUSCO

Posted by Persiana | Filed under Art + Design, Film + Video

Italian-born artist, Angelo Musco, has been living and working in NYC since 1997. His art practice has been focused on performance art, photography, and video work, often combining the various media in one organic project. His photo shoots, which are the foundation of his photographic work and may involve a few dozens to a couple of hundred people, have become more and more ambitious in scale and complexity, and are often held in private and public spaces, becoming a performance in their own right. Musco’s investigation into the power of aggregations found in nature such as sperm during egg fertilization, an ant colony, beehive or a school of fish has fueled his most recent works.

Musco’s upcoming project, featuring the Parthenogenesis Film Sequence, is presented in conjunction with choreography by Stefanie Batten Bland and is inspired by Musco’s 11 films. The first phase of the Parthenogenesis project, a stunning and ethereal human installation which consisted of an enormous white dress with a circular base 30-feet in diameter, held up by 11 statuesque women covered in white make-up, white wigs, and even white contact lenses, took place for the first time as part of the VIP events of the prestigious Armory Show in New York City in March 2005. It was then re-presented in Miami in December 2006 during the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.

The current project consists of a video installation featuring 11 films Musco shot in 11 locations selected from places that relate to the artist’s life, and are all situated on the 41st parallel: amongst them are Naples, Musco’s birth-city; New York City, his adopted home; as well as nine others such as Baku, Azerbaijan; Madrid, Spain; Beijing, China; and Istanbul, Turkey. Each film captures the intense image of a very pregnant woman desperately running with a sweat streaked face, holding her belly as she urgently tries to post-pone the delivery of her baby. The film sequence has proven to be one of the most fulfilling and challenging projects for the artist, and marks final stage of an 8-year quest. It has enabled him to circumnavigate the globe, channel the energies and emotions of these unique locations, and create a multi-dimensional experience within a global discourse for the author and the audience alike.

The conclusive phase of the Parthenogenesis Trilogy will be a two-part project scheduled to take place in March 2012, concurrently with the Armory Show. The first part consisting of an exhibition of Musco’s 11 films at the Italian Cultural Institute, the second featuring Batten Bland’s choreography which will be showcased at the renowned Alvin Ailey Center in mid-town Manhattan. Bland’s choreography will bring Musco’s films into 3-dimensional reality. Through speed changes, sounds, human and fabric manipulation the images seen on film will transcend the screen and enter the real world.

For more information about the projects you may contact Ombretta Agró at: ombretta@ombrettaagro.com or at 212-433 0878.