Bellezza Pericolosa Pan| Palazzo delle Arti Napoli Our cities abound with glamour. Expensive stores, fashionable people, smart restaurants, glossy magazines on every street corner and in every waiting room and the ubiquitous billboard, contemporary sphinxes, all declaring society's ideal of beauty; impossibly thin, blemishless (read airbrushed), young and younger. The exhibition "Dangerous Beauty" questions the effect, in human terms, of living in the shadow of such images of beauty that, without manipulation, may have no human incarnation; images that are deliberately designed to stir up the feelings of inadequacy and self doubt which stimulate consumption. In the quest to emulate this fiction of desirability , the journey from manipulation of images to the "doctoring" and manipulation of the self seems increasingly short. More money is spent in this country on cosmetics than on education and social services combined, while close to one million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed last year in the United States. Anorexia and self-mutilation are rampant. Girls, women and increasingly men alike, compare themselves to the air brushed "beauties" and feel that everything about themselves is wrong. The Exhibition The exhibition will be composed of a selection of work in a variety of media (painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video) chosen to reflect a response to "dangerous beauty", this area where the beauty myth collides with reality. The works selected examine the phenomena and implications of the current dictates of beauty and identity, contest the values and apparatus of the times and raise the question as to whether there is a place for the subjective and the individual in a society of mass expression. Artists under consideration include to date: Participating artists: |
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