Francesco Vezzoli: Right You Are (if You Think You Are)

Francesco Vezzoli caused a flurry with his 2005 video, "Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's "Caligula,"" a salacious hit starring Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren and Karen Black, as well as his 2007 Venice Biennale TV spots (starring Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Levy), which advertised a mock U.S. Presidential campaign and kept the artist's name in the press long after the exhibition premiered. Most recently, Vezzoli was invited by Performa07, the second biennial of new performance art in New York, to transform the rotunda of New York's Guggenheim Museum with his restaging of Luigi Pirandello's 1917 play, "Cosi e (se vi pare)" "(Right You Are If You Think You Are])," In all of these works, Vezzoli has shown his skill at both joining and revealing the cult of celebrity, and has proven to be one of today's most interesting new artists. This succinct new volume contextualizes Vezzoli in a conversation with Nancy Spector, Chief Curator at the Guggenheim Museum and U.S. Commissioner to the 2007 Venice Biennale.