Cai-Guo-Qiang is the only performer in the exhibition: on the lower floor of the museum a nude model on a horse poses for painters; canvases and easels in a timeless atmosphere. Matthieu Laurette seems to choose real characters but who instead are the doubles of contemporary stars and divas, organising international gatherings of them.

Cai Guo-Qiang, “Still Life Performance”, 2000 © Cai Guo-Qiang

Recreating alternative worlds through painting is American artist John Currin, who paints today’s obsession with big breasted young women with caricature realism and a manifest interest for painting tradition and Kurt Kauper who in his “Diva Fiction” realistically and meticulously paints singers who are actually completely invented.

Doug Aitken’s video installation creates a juxtaposition between the myth of the American Far West and areas filled with offices and motorways whilst Gregory Crewdson creates juxtaposition by positioning some extraneous element in the film set which he builds. The photos seem to be of a surreal and glittering drama.

Gabriel Orozco, “Ping Pong Table”, 1998, Mixed media, 76.2 x 426.1 x 426.1 cm, Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles © Gabriel Orozco

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco makes unusable structures, almost unbuildable. “Ping Pong Table” is a table tennis table for four with a pool with flowers at the centre: enchanting!

Jeffrey Deitch is dealer, curator and gallery owner of Deitch Projects, a gallery in Soho (New York) to which he has recently added another space in Wooster Street (Soho) as well as a further 4000 sqm open only from 7 to 11 in the evening, in Williamsburg (Brooklyn).

He graduated in art history and economics and the two subjects came together to form his main line of work, a new militant critical figure was born along with Deitchland!

Since the eighties he has been head of the Art Investment sector for the First National Bank in Manhattan, he has become a powerful figure on the New York scene and something of a King Midas in the art world.

Manager of Jeff Koons and curator of the famous Dakis Joannou collection. Curator of events such as “Artificial Nature”, in Italy famous for “Post Human” (1992 Castello di Rivoli), in which he presented artists who at the time were little known or who had never previously shown: Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Matthew Barney, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Mike Kelley, the text in his catalogues is both fast and readable.

Deitch Projects is interested in artists who are linked to pop culture, crossing over between the world of art and that of fashion, design and cinema, often more interested in the production of the work than in its simple management. Memorable projects include the “Navy project” by Vanessa Beecroft, a performance by the Italian artist with the military American marines, held on an aircraft carrier in New York.

Form Follows Fiction
Date: October 17th 2001 – January 27th, 2002
Place: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
Address: Piazza Mafalda di Savoia -10098 Rivoli, Italy
Tel: +39 (0)11 956 5222
https://www.castellodirivoli.org