Rocco | Prud’hon and more | November 2023

Von Buren Contemporary presents

Prud’hon and More

 the solo exhibition of

AGOSTINO ROCCO

Vernissage

Sunday November 26, 2023

5 p.m. – 9.00 p.m.

the exhibition will remain on show until December 6

Opening hours: 11:00-13:30 and 16:00-19:30; Sunday and Monday by appointment

Von Buren Contemporary

Via Giulia 13, 00186 Rome

Von Buren Contemporary is delighted to present Prud’hon and More, the solo exhibition of Italian artist Agostino Rocco.

Rocco’s technically dazzling creations are in the portrait tradition, imbued with historical atmosphere and sobriety. On closer inspection, however, they reveal a subversive streak of humour and unexpected anachronisms that serve to disrupt our assumptions while remaining gorgeously seductive. Rocco thus manages to glide across two worlds, proposing classic images with a modern twist.

At the heart of the exhibition lies a series of paintings inspired by French Romantic painter Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s Portrait of a Young Man to be found at the Louvre. Recalling Francis Bacon’s obsession with Veláquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Rocco insistently reworks Prud’hon’s haunting picture in a cycle of increasing distortions that clearly depart from their source while still paying homage to the revered original.

Agostino Rocco was born in 1971 in Padua, the city where he still lives and works. Self-taught, Rocco has devoted himself to the study of art history and the work of certain Old Masters who have become a constant and vital source of inspiration: the Tuscan and Flemish artists of the 15th century, and the French and Dutch painters of the 17th century.