Vanessa Beecroft: VB64 Performance / Sculpture at Deitch Studios, Long Island City

VB64 is Vanessa Beecroft’s first public performance in New York since 2000 and an accompanying exhibition of new sculpture at Deitch Studios on the East River in Long Island City. In the adjoining gallery new wax and gesso sculptures are on display. “Vanessa Beecroft works in the space between painting, sculpture, performance, and real life. In VB64, she introduces a new element into the work, gesso sculptures cast from live models, resting on coffin-like bases. The twenty live models in the performance will be in white body make up and at the beginning of the performance will be indistinguishable from the sculptural casts. VB64 pushes Beecroft’s deliberate confusion between sculpture, performance and real life into a new realm, the tension between life and death. VB64 is inspired by Sicilian funerary sculpture of the Renaissance. The first version of the work was presented in July 2008 in the apse of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo. The American version is adapted to the cathedral-like spa