LUMBUNG ORATIONES, mixed media on panel, two cell phones used by Luca Rossi between 2009 and 2022, the collector’s cell phone, 132×97 cm ; Courtesy Private Collection and Galleria SIX (Milan), Luca Rossi 2022. 

 

Since 2009, the Luca Rossi collective has been engaged in daily critical work from which, over the years, a project has emerged that aims to rethink the idea of museum, artist and work of art. Since 2009, Luca Rossi has been able to anticipate a new hybrid role in which several roles merge and mingle, particularly those of spectator, author, critic and collector of his own vision. Between 2009 and 2014, Luca Rossi overcame and anticipated interest in the NFT world and some current studies on artificial intelligence. 

In 2010, he was defined by Fabio Cavallucci in Exibart as “the most interesting artistic personality in Italy” who could concretely change the art system; in 2014, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio referred to him as the “new Vanessa Beecroft”, meaning the new promise of Italian contemporary art. Luca Rossi immediately developed that critical context from which he would later develop unconventional projects. Angela Vettese stated that since reading Luca Rossi’s blog, she no longer deals with the practice but only with the theory of art. Andrea Lissoni, current Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, had Luca Rossi’s texts read out to his students. 

In 2009, he invented the term “evolved IKEA” to highlight the weaknesses of much contemporary art and defined what is known as the “Young Indiana Jones Syndrome”, going on to write about it in 2012 in an article in Artribune. Here too, he anticipates a trend that has been strongly characterising the Italian and international art scene over the last 10 years. In 2022 he hacked into the Documenta 15 event, creating a clandestine project that was seen around the world by 300,000 people; for some years now he has been running a podcast on Spotify that has reached 78,000 listens and since 2016 the “Skype Art Academy” for training artists.

(1) ROSARY (for the Lumbung Orationes project that hakered #Documenta15), rosary, mobile phone headset, Luca Rossi 2022.
(2) By Left Hand Fingertips, saliva, dust, various materials, Luca Rossi 2009-2022, Tate Modern.
(3) If you don’t understand something search for it on YouTube, wooden letters, 11×2 metres, Luca Rossi, Val Badia (Smach 2017).
(4) Thermal Refuge, reading a text inside a spa converted from an air raid shelter, Luca Rossi 2016.  
(5) Whatever you want, anything purchased on Amazon and delivered to the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, Luca Rossi 2021.
(6) Blind Works (2014-2022), customised works by choosing three artists and delivered directly to your home ‘blind’, Luca Rossi 2022.
(7) Order a pizza, pizza orders, press release modification, Massimo De Carlo 2009.

CRITICISM, THE FIGHT, THE FUTURE: LUCA ROSSI  

In the Italian contemporary art scene there is a figure of considerable interest. Luca Rossi–artist/ collective, critic, curator, and blogger–is a controversial personality who works in anonymity, as some kind of Anonymous of the Art System. In Luca Rossi’s philosophy, the ego no longer exists because anyone can be Luca Rossi, at the same time that the “critical process”, the virtual space of the Internet, and the real context no longer have boundaries and blend into one. 

“Luca Rossi” was born in 2009 from the severe critical context that he himself triggered. “Evolved Ikea”, “Young Indiana Jones Syndrome”, “Smart-relativism”, “Grandparents and Parents Foundation”, are just some of the keywords around which Luca Rossi has been developing a daily critical work. Critical concepts that affect an entire generation of artists forced to confront a century as dense as the twentieth century. This critical work has allowed him to anticipate a fusion and confusion of roles that we can now see very well in a role that we could define as “spectauthor”. Luca Rossi’s unconventional projects arise from a manipulation of information that is treated exactly as if it were clay to be moulded, long before the concept of “fake news” became so important in the public debate. The nature of his works experiences a fibrillation between imagination, conventional object, direct experience and mediated experience.

 Today individuals experience a sort of “non-experience” in the sense that they spend most of their time surfing the “network”, producing a “new memory-without memory” or a “passive and a-critical assimilation” into the system. Luca Rossi knows this well. He constantly reminds us of the history of art and ideas, of our past, of what it means to be critical and active, struggling to preserve one’s own authenticity and originality in the great McDonald that is our contemporary world.

Many curators and artists, both in Italy and Europe, have been following Luca’s work with great excitement. By now Luca is considered the only critical voice that “stands out” in the current Italian landscape.

It is worrisome that Luca’s work has yet to be recognized by institutions and organizations, despite receiving the acknowledgement of the public and many curators and artists. This says a lot about what the value that the Italian system places on the “real artist”. The Italian contemporary landscape has been dragging itself down for more than 10 years, producing artists who “copy and paste”, endless repetitions of projects signed by the same names, and decreeing the end of contemporary art. 

 

Luca Rossi is an independent author for which anyone can be “Luca Rossi”. In this way everyone is stimulated to a new sense of opportunity and responsibility.

Luca Rossi started the blog Whitehouse as a platform for art criticism, information, and art-related projects in 2009. A better synthesis of the blog could be found on : www.lucarossilab.it. Major representatives of the art world have participated in the blog, contributing to its popularity. Luca Rossi has written in social networks and specialized magazines like “Flash Art”, Artribune.com, Exibart.com and Huffington Post with lucid criticism and originality.

​Enrico Morsiani (1979) is the coordinator of the open collective Luca Rossi. In 2004 he graduated at Bologna University in International and Diplomatic Sciences. Between 2001 and 2009 he took part in solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Between 2005 and 2010 he attended “ImproTeatro” theater improvisation courses and today he works on the field of communication. In 2016 he opens the “Luca Rossi Lab” site that develops and coordinates all the projects realized in 10 years. 

Luca Rossi was defined “the most interesting personality” in Italy by Fabio Cavallucci, and “the new Vanessa Beecroft” by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio. In 2011 Alfredo Cramerotti (curator of “Manifesta” and Museum Director Mostyn, Wales) wrote: “To be honest, I’m not Roberta (a 2011 project by Luca Rossi) made me think more than dozens of other projects I have seen “live”. In 2013 the art critic Angela Vettese stated that since he read Luca Rossi’s blog she stopped devoting himself to the practice of art but only to theory. In December 2015 a comparison between Mario Perniola and Luca Rossi was published in the magazine Alfabeta2. In 2017 an article from Artribune magazine summarizes Luca Rossi’s work starting in 2009.

Selected official and unofficial art projects:

Mart, Rovereto (2009); Whitney Biennial, New York (2010); Biennale di Venezia (2013, 2015, 2019, 2022); Abbazia di Sénanque (2013); Gamec di Bergamo (2014); Boros Collection, Berlino (2015); Serpentine Gallery, Londra (2015); Fondazione Prada, Milano (2016); Hotel Helvetia, Porretta Terme (2016); Quirinale, Roma (2017); SMACH 2017, Val Badia (2017); New Museum, New York, (2017, 2021); Tate Modern, Londra (2017, 2021); National Gallery of Scotland (2018); Centrale Fies/ Manifesta 12, 7800 Project (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, #OccupySandretto (2018); ICA Milano (2019); Gagosian Gallery Rome (2019); Venezuelan Pavilion (2019); Prada Foundation Venice (2019); My Arbor My Art, MyArbor (2019); Palazzo Strozzi (2021,2022); Hangar Bicocca (2021); Bourse de Commerce (2021); Pompidou Museum (2022); MoMA Museum (2022); Documenta 15 (2022); Lisson gallery (2022), Galleria SIX (2023).