Contro Vezzoli
Alessio Ascari, Francesco Vezzoli, Kaleidoscope Press & Fon azion e Galleria Civica – Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità di Trento, Milano - Trento 2009 (pp. 112, € 15,00 / inglese-italiano)

“Vezzoli stands for everything that has gone wrong in the art world.” “The truth is that Vezzoli’s mission is to get himself noticed.” Such is the mood of some of the closely reasoned tirades published in Contro Vezzoli, the violently caustic pamphlet published against the famous artist from Brescia by five poison-penned international critics.

But you’d be mistaken if you thought this must be some sort of intransigent and puritanical attack on a successful artist: Regazzoni, De Moraes, De Latour, Rubini and Viviant (whose real names are Michele Robecchi, Dieter Roelstraete, Martin Herbert, Jens Hoffmann and Stéphanie Moisdon) are none other than the pseudonyms of five accomplices to a hoax. They were persuaded by Alessio Ascari and Francesco Vezzoli to think up and write fake hatchet jobs to the detriment of the latter, for publication in a fictitious book by a fictitious publisher. The ease with which Vezzoli deconstructs and manipulates the gamut of contemporary media is breathtaking, in this case by flaunting an extra sense of clever self-deprecation. The artist’s proof book, published on the occasion of the “Civica 1989-2009: Celebration, Institution, Critique” exhibition at the Fondazione Galleria Civica in Trento, will be distributed and sold at leading European bookshops.