Dalí Dalí featuring Francesco Vezzoli

This exhibition experiments with the exhibition format itself by incorporating a contemporary artist, Italian Francesco Vezzoli (born 1971), with the aim of highlighting Salvador Dalí’s (1904–1989) oeuvre in a contemporary context, and understanding Vezzoli from a historical perspective.

Both artists have focused on the media phenomena of their respective times. The exhibition works range from traditional paintings, drawings and objects to film trailers, advertising posters and jewellery.

This exhibition brings together two artists, Salvador Dalí and Francesco Vezzoli. The exhibition highlights the artist role that Salvador Dalí assumed. It also experiments with the exhibition phenomenon itself, by juxtaposing a historical artist with a contemporary artist, Francesco Vezzoli.

The exhibition is divided into two rooms, separated by three doors. One set of doors is locked, as a metaphor for the unattainable. In the first room, works by Dalí from the 1930s are shown in a traditional museum setting. This period has long been considered to be the best in Dalí’s oeuvre. The second room presents Salvador Dalí the Universal Artist, who experimented in a wide range of genres.

Salvador Dalí the phenomenon is highly interesting today, particularly his use of the mass media. It is hard to distinguish between Dalí the man, and Dalí the celebrity. The rear wall presents Francesco Vezzoli’s work, which focuses on the celebrity cult. Using famous people in the way a painter would use colours on a palette, he parodies a social climate in which the announcement of an event has become more essential than the event itself.

WALLACE: […] Tell me this, what do you think will happen to you when you die?
DALÍ: I myself do not believe in my death.
WALLACE: You will not die?
DALÍ: No, no believe in general in death but in the death of Dalí absolutely not. Believe in my death becoming very – almost impossible.
Mike Wallace abd Salvador Dalí,
The Mike Wallace Interview, TV interview, 19 April 1958

Curator: John Peter Nilsson
Project curator for Francesco Vezzoli: Caroline Corbetta
Assistant curator, Moderna Museet: Matilda Olof-Ors