Michael Bevilacqua
Happy Nightmare Baby
24.04.03 - 28.06.03
Michael Bevilacqua (born 1966) has generated interest with his colourful and graphic paintings by stylistically mixing abstraction, sharp-edged figuration and the aesthetics from popular culture.
Functioning as a visual DJ, Bevilacqua samples symbols and signs from the present cultural geography and incorporates these into thoroughly composed visual collages. As a result, his paintings are both statements of a global urban culture as well as documents of Bevilacqua's own life.
Michael Bevilacqua grew up in California but now lives in New York. In his paintings the contrast between these two different places are illuminated. On that note, the paintings mirror the division between culture/nature, buildings/grass, sidewalks/trees, and high culture/low culture. In emphasising these contrasting elements Bevilacqua's chosen format is the diptych, which divides the painting into two wings.
Neo-pop
The contrasting graphics and the vivid colours of Michael Bevilacqua's paintings invites the viewer into a world of psychedelic pop. Bevilacqua's paintings are loaded with signs. Everything from brightly coloured landscapes with abstract figurations, stripes and grids, cityscapes with butterflies, flowers and oversized road signs- to added typography and logos from popular fashion brands (Prada, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent) co-exist in Bevilaqcua's universe. Additionally, images of Bjork, figures from Matthew Barney's videos, band-names (Mc Solaar, Krafwerk, Air) are presented alongside characters from The Avengers, Casper the Friendly Ghost, as are reproductions of drawings by Bevilaqcua's children blended with Japanese food products and Chinese signs. All the above are remixed into carefully composed images. Visible in the entertaining complexity of Bevilacqua's paintings is a youthful energy and a similar enthusiasm and marking of identity, characteristic to a devoted fan.
Michael Bevilacqua's eclecticism is exemplary of the Post-modern levelling of High and Low, the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, High culture and Mass culture. A movement that began with the emergence of Pop art. Several elements from the Sixties' youth culture (the rock music, poster art and flower children) are taken up and reworked in Bevilacqua's practice. Noteworthy is the different method applied by Bevilacqua: contrary to Pop-art that emphasised the surface of the painting in the revolt against the classical illusion of depth, Bevilacqua's compositions are constructed by layers upon layers of meaning, adding pictorial depth to his urban landscapes or scenic cityscapes.
Where Pop art highlighted art's technical reducibility by serial production of a single artwork, Bevilacqua's paintings are meticulously 'handmade'. When painting, Bevilacqua uses a technique where each layer of colour is applied by a 'tracing-and-taping' technique, similar to the painting method of racecars. This technique gives Bevilacqua's paintings their significant graphic character inspired by his childhood fascination with racecar stickers.
Happy Nightmare Baby
The new series of paintings, Happy Nightmare Baby, has its point of origin in one of the most significant events of the year in the US: Halloween. As the humoristic title of the series implies, it is a tradition that with its array of characters dressed up as ghost and ghouls manages to scare most children.
In Bevilacqua's dark Gothic universe, we meet 'The Pumpkin King', the skeleton character from Tim Burton's animated film 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. This Jack Skellington and his ghost dog 'Zero' and the other scary inhabitants of 'Halloweenland' are all loved characters from this cult animation. In the film, Jack is a melancholic persona and the mastermind behind the organisation of Halloween. One day, Jack finds himself depressed and bored with the fright, horror and ghastliness surrounding the Halloween celebration. In this depressive state of mind Jack falls through a hole and arrives in 'Christmastown', a world dominated by glistering snow, light, colours and happiness! -A contrast to the heavy atmosphere of 'Halloweenland'. Though Jack Skellington does not fully comprehend the Christmas rituals, witnessed in this wonderful universe, he wants to introduce these at home in Halloweenland. However, despite all his good intentions the end result of Jack's experiment is something completely other than expected.
Remix
In the new paintings there are, as in earlier works, references to music: logos, quotes and symbols from (and of) rock bands such as Radiohead, Happy Mondays, The Ramones, Bauhaus, Joy Division and Velvet Underground. In aesthetic parallel to Tim Burton's humoristic, animated dark-land we encounter Murdoc and 2D from the band Gorillaz, whose musical breakthrough was the mixture of hip-hop, pop and dub, fronted by animated band members.
Also an American underground cartoon character 'Emily The Strange' is drawn into Belvilacqua's universe. She is a little, defiant girl and in opposition to normality she embraces a black punk-aesthetic universe where cobwebs, chandeliers, bats and darkness are the norm.
In the midst of all the references from popular culture, the appropriation of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' is visible as semi-abstract forms and colours in the foreground of one painting. This is a significant quote taking into consideration the enormous art historical importance, raising questions about life and death, culture and religion in our culture. Michael Bevilacqua enjoys the mixing of high and low and exactly this reference puts the humoristic and absurd iconography surrounding Halloween into perspective. Accordingly, adjacent to tombstones and crucifixes there are testimonies to life by the presence of colour, humour and flowers in Belvilacquas's paintings.
With the Happy Nightmare Baby exhibition, Michael Bevilacqua has, compared to earlier works, softened the tone of his palette. It is as though Belviacqua's remix of signs from youth culture and the identity forming personal passions are expanded to include the reflection of adult life, at a stage where matrimony and the role of parenthood obliges .
Intelligence for colour and form.
Bevilacqua's paintings are comparable to a type of self-portraits or notes from a diary. Emphasised by the accumulation of signs from his cultural preferences: the type of music he listens to, drawings by his children and so forth-Bevilacqua's paintings become a type of visual biography. The cultural references of his paintings from music, film, fashion etc., are all equally part of an international metropolic youth culture. On that note, Belvilacqua's paintings are seismographs of our culture, a culture rapidly becoming increasingly entertainment based and identity-orientated than earlier. Furtermore, the paintings document a time where youth has become a period prolonged with several decades.
However, the humoristic and cultural aware bricolage of logos and quotes are simply one aspect to Michael Bevilacqua's work. The striking about Bevilacqua's paintings is his unique ability to compose imaginary landscapes and his way of combining colours. The vast number of patterns, stripes, grids, dotes and more or less abstract forms and figures are central to the collages. These all add to the construction of the particular cosmopolitan fantasy landscape generating associations with the viewer upon encountering Michael Bevilacqua's works.
In the field of young artist inspired by pop culture, Michael Bevilacqua, stands out exactly because of this intelligence for colour and form.
Public Collections:
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Neuberger Berman LLC, New York
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California
Orange County Museum of Art, California
Mitsuni Collection, Tokyo, Japan