PRESS RELEASE T.J. WILCOX - Galleria Raffaella Cortese

PRESS RELEASE
T.J. WILCOX
T.J. Wilcox
Mathilde Rosier
Mathilde Rosier performance
via a.stradella 1
via a.stradella 7
via a.stradella 4 7.00 pm
opening reception november 20 7.00 - 9.00 pm
november 20, 2014 | february 14, 2015
tuesday - saturday 10.00 - 1.00 pm | 3.00 - 7.30 pm
Raffaella Cortese is proud to present the third solo show by American artist T.J. Wilcox.
Wilcox’s work is characterized by a fascination with personal narrative and the ways in which history is always under
construction, woven from fact, myth, memory, associations, and the bombardment of information we all receive on a
moment-to-moment basis.
T.J. Wilcox is mainly known for his super 8 films transferred to video, 16 mm film projections, collages and
installations of famous people and their glamorous - sometimes harrowing and dramatic - stories. Fact meets fiction
(at times the artist's own fantasy or history) in beautifully haunting portraits of the famous Marie Antoinette, Marlene
Dietrich, Czar Nicholas of Russia, or the Marchesa Luisa Casati. These portraits continue in his work with the not so
famous, such as his close friends, the superintendent of his studio building and his beloved French Bulldog. The
collaged films are often romantic and decadent in their subjects and subject matter, and his stunningly beautiful
vignettes often blur biography and autobiography and embrace the romantic history and escapism of cinema.
For the first time, for his exhibition at Raffaella Cortese Wilcox will show his film The Tales of Hoffmann, which
features the music and voices of New York's Metropolitan Opera. The Metropolitan Opera will include this work as part
of their international theatrical simulcasts of the company's upcoming performances of The Tales of Hoffmann in early
2015. Additionally, the installation will feature new works created especially for the Milan exhibition, which relate to
and derive from Wilcox's new film work, notably a series of light boxes and mixed media collage works on paper.
T.J. Wilcox's most recent film was inspired, in part, by his love of the Jacques Offenbach opera The Tales of
Hoffmann (1881), the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann (which inspired the opera), the famous discourse around these
stories (notably by Freud in his essay of 1919 The Uncanny) and the 1951 film (The Tales of Hoffmann) by Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Long an admirer of their films, this new project gave Wilcox an opportunity to attempt
to put into his own practice Powell and Pressburger's concept of "composed film" whereby not only are all of the
elements that comprise the film given detailed attention, but so, too, is the combination of those elements into a
harmonious whole.
Animation has often played a part in Wilcox's films but with this new project the artist has made his first entirely
animated work using a variety of animation techniques and featuring a cast of anthropomorphized characters.
T.J. Wilcox (1965, Seattle Washington) lives and works in New York. He studied at the School of Visual Arts of New York and at
the Art Center College of Design of Pasaneda. He recently had an important solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art
(2013-2014). He has exhibited in numerous museums such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007), the Ludwig Museum,
Cologne (2006), and again the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000, 2004).
For all press inquiries, please contact Erica Colombo at +39 02 2043555 [email protected]
silvia bächli
michael fliri
anna maria maiolino
jana sterbak
via a. stradella 7
mirosław bałka
jitka hanzlovà
marcello maloberti
jessica stockholder
via a. stradella 1 via a. stradella 4
yael bartana
roni horn
ana mendieta
james welling
20129 milano italia
karla black
joan jonas
helen mirra
t. j. wilcox
t +39 02 2043555 f +39 02 29533590
barbara bloom
william e. jones
mathilde rosier
[email protected]
alejandro cesarco
kimsooja
martha rosler
www.galleriaraffaellacortese.com
keren cytter
zoe leonard
kiki smith