Francesco Vezzoli

I did not know about Francesco Vezzoli and just discovered him and his work. Very clever, comical and audacious, I love his way of seeing and explaning things. As Artinfo puts it :

Francesco Vezzoli has been called both a tease and a whore. The tease camp points to such recent artworks as a trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist and a premiere for a play that never ran, while the other cites his self-admitted obsession with bold-faced names, many of whom — Helen Mirren, Milla Jovovich, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Sharon Stone, Courtney Love, and Benicio Del Torro, to name a few — have participated in these productions.

Both tendencies are evident in Vezzoli’s latest work, a highly polished, celebrity-endorsed marketing campaign for an utterly elusive product. Debuting tomorrow at Gagosian Gallery in Rome and running through March 21 is “Greed,” an exhibition based on a nonexistent perfume, featuring a minute-long commercial directed by Roman Polanski and starring Portman and Michelle Williams, a series of billboard-like ads with images of famous Greed gals (artists ranging from Frida Kahlo to Eva Hesse), and a nifty bottle with a photograph of the artist in drag (an homage to Marcel Duchamp, also auteur of a fake perfume whose bottle has a self-portrait in drag).

And inside the bottle? Well, last we heard that’s still up in the air.

ARTINFO caught up with Vezzoli on the eve of the worldwide launch of his new fragrance and asked about his celebrities, his critics, and the fugitive scent of Greed.

Read the very captivating and amusing interview here and watch the trailor to his short film here.