We at ELLE are in conversation with the most eligible and suave Piero Tomassoni who is a contemporary art curator and critic.
Piero Tomassoni
He has worked with international institutions, galleries and collectors for over ten years and he founded Artvisor in 2015. He is a frequent lecturer on contemporary art and its market at various universities throughout Europe and is a board member of the Fondazione Morra in Naples. Piero also trained and qualified as a corporate lawyer in London.
Artvisor (www.artvisor.com), the firm that Tomassoni co-founded, is an innovative art advisory platform. Its purpose is to guide people towards great contemporary art, thereby supporting the work of artists and galleries who are making a significant impact in the cultural landscape. “We carefully select artworks on the basis of the career and reputation of the artists and galleries that we work with. In our online platform, we combine a proprietary algorithm (and soon AI) with our advisors’ expertise to help you find artworks that you will love,” he says. On the scope of Artvisor’s work, he continues, “We also help galleries with the curation of exhibitions of both emerging and historical artists, by providing unique access to private and institutional artworks. We help individual and corporate clients build their collections with bespoke acquisition strategies, in addition to designing courses and salons that foster a deeper understanding of contemporary art.”
Here’s his selection of artists to catch at Frieze New York:
Olivia Erlanger at AND NOW (Dallas).
Erlanger’s work is concerned with systems of value, trade, and power, and how these intersect with narrative and identity. The new pieces, large sculptures of mermaid tails, reflect on the ways in which women must constantly shapeshift according to their social environment, and are often either sexualized or demonized.
Claudio Verna at Cardi Gallery (London – Milan).
Verna is a living artist whose career began in the 1960’s and whose works can be considered the Italian response to American Minimalist painting. His use of hard edges and uniform colour fields at the beginning of his career has changed over time to a more painterly and oneiric abstraction. A leading figure of Italian painting since the 1970s, he has been receiving new attention from international galleries and collectors in recent years.
Rachid Koraïchi at Aicon (New York).
The bronzes and textiles on display illustrate how the Algerian artist’s work is influenced by his heritage as a Quraishite, a transcriber of Quaranic text. Each piece involves a stylised alphabet and associated symbols, melding characters from Arabic, Sumerian, Hebrew, Chinese, and the artist’s personal system of codes, numbers, and marks.
Ana Mendieta at Galerie Lelong & Co. (New York).
Mendieta is widely celebrated for her pioneering work centred around the themes of exile, displacement and the relationship between the body and the landscape. Born in Cuba and sent to the United States as a child, her photographic works speak of her relationship with her adopted and original homelands.
Anish Kapoor at Electric.
A section of the fair dedicated to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) artworks curated by Daniel Birnbaum. Into Yourself, Fall, is Kapoor’s first virtual reality work. It seeks to stimulate vertigo by taking the viewer/user on a journey through the human body.
Galleries to see in NY (current exhibition) during Frieze:
Christine Park (Xyza Cruz Bacani), 515 W 23rd Street
Luxembourg & Dayan (Irma Blank), 64 E 77th Street
Blain Southern (Abdoulaye Konaté), 547 W 25th Street
CLEARING (Lili Reynaud-Dewar), 396 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn
Written by Aishwarya Nair Mathew (pictured above)
