Lelong

In The marquis and a bearded dominatrix with a cake in the oven, Angelo Filomeno will present new embroidery paintings and sculpture that exemplify his signature technique and fascination with the macabre. For the exhibition, Filomeno enlists some of his regular characters—insects, dead philosophers, grotesque objects—and incorporates elements previously unseen in his works. The exhibition will open to the public on Friday, September 10 from 6 to 8 pm, and the artist will be present.

Fantastical and allegorical in imagery, and intricate in technique, Filomeno’s works are deeply informed by his upbringing in Italy. Filomeno learned to embroider from his mother and began apprenticing for a tailor when he was 7; his father was a blacksmith. From a young age, Filomeno formed a keen awareness of texture, composition, detail, and craftsmanship. He also developed an interest in the darker facets of the human condition: mortality, isolation, compulsion, fragility. These stark themes have pervaded his work, juxtaposed with the use of alluring, sensuous materials such as silk, black glass, and crystals.

In his newest exhibition, Filomeno pares down the opulent, ornate approach for which he is most known and presents sparse, raw works that evoke the artist’s common themes with minimal means. In one series of embroidery paintings, Filomeno eschews silk as the predominant material and, instead, uses recycled burlap—a fabric that is decidedly un-glamorous and, like elements of his other works, has ties to his childhood. Across seven panels of the rough, stained burlap, cockroaches swarm in and out of the plane ominously, without pattern. Filomeno will also show a triptych of detached, decomposing heads of men he deems ‘philosophers,’ a character that he has revisited throughout his career as a paradigm of the harsh aspects of reality and reflection. “The irony,” Filomeno has said, “is that these portraits represent death, but they are still thinking about their own existence.”

With their heads isolated at the center of the panels, their faces seemingly frozen in time, the philosopher triptych evokes Filomeno’s sculptures, which will also be exhibited. The main sculptural work on view will be a long table displaying hand-blown glass objects representing the seven deadly sins. With this new, expansive work and the series of embroidery paintings, Filomeno persists in his investigation of human limitations and our continuing attempts to transcend them.

The marquis and a bearded dominatrix with a cake in the oven is the artist’s second exhibition at Galerie Lelong. Since his first exhibition, 2008’s Betrayed Witches, Filomeno has presented a solo exhibition at the Savannah College of Art and Design and has been featured in 12 group exhibitions, including Damaged Romanticism at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University; Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, KAdE Kunsthal, Amersfoort, the Netherlands; and the annual invitational exhibition at the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts, New York. Filomeno’s work is in various international museum collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.