What can I say?
I’m really very fond of Vanessa. I could end this press release right there.
Can you imagine?
Massimo Minini publicly confesses to his affection for VB.
Maybe just looking to go viral?
To grab a little attention in an unimaginative world where press releases invariably start off with: “our gallery is pleased to announce the twelfth exhibition by …, fresh from a solo show at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover.” A city where I once spent two days—for the Kestner, of course—and wanted to shoot myself in the head. Thank goodness there were some vibrant, kaleidoscopic works by James Turrell to make my time in that bombed-out city feel less bleak.
Nowadays, rather than the content of art, we tend to talk about its success, the awards, prices, record sales. So when we look at a painting on the wall, all it may say to us is how much it commanded at a recent London auction (glossing over any disappointments).
VB’s work, on the other hand, shouts beauty, drips beauty: the beauty of female bodies, gorgeous women from Africa, sculptures made of Belgian black or Portuguese pink marble.
From small drawings from Vanessa’s student days at the Brera, to her Polaroids, her enlarged snapshots, and then those plaster casts of models which she then proceeded to chop up, sculpting the fragments out of marble and placing them on rough-hewn bases that serve as a foil to the smooth, comely bodies.
As Vanessa constructs things, she keeps drawing, with a big piece of graphite that may even tie it to a stick, like Matisse.
VB and I look forward to seeing you. It’ll be an astonishing show.

Writing from Brescia, a city as full of surprises as Massimo Minini’s gallery
September sixth, two thousand seventeen.