Antonio Riello – Vatican Air Force and Navy

Spectrum Fine Art – the West End gallery committed to establishing a London presence for the new generation of leading international contemporary artists – presents Vatican Air Force and Navy, an exhibition of controversial works by Italian artist Antonio Riello from Thursday 27th October to Friday 11th November 2005.

Vatican Air Force and Navy at Spectrum Fine Art is the first major solo exhibition by Antonio Riello in the UK, having previously exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States.

This show will feature, amongst other works, the visually striking but near sacrilegious work KT22 – a piece characteristic of the artist’s mission of subverting ostensibly mundane objects to create a sense of uneasy curiosity on the part of the beholder, leading the viewer to question previously comfortable notions and associations with the form of that object.

Antonio Riello – Subverting Convention, Reversing The Norm Antonio Riello claims to view art from the “wrong side” and his artistic career has been characterised by his production of works deemed provocative by many critics.

From the outset of his artistic career, Riello has sought to act as a social commentator scrutinising with wry wickedness his immediate surroundings, in particular contemporary Italian existence.

In his exhibition Ladies Weapons in New York in 1999, working military weapons were accessorised with fake fur, and enriched with jewels and colourful fabric – transforming weapons of death and pain into kitsch fashion accessories.

As part of his 1997 exhibition Italiani Brava Gente (Italians Are Good People), Riello created an installation of a real, working video game depicting the racism endemic to Italian society. In a similar fusion of entertainment and the unpalatable, for the Blondies and Brownies group exhibition in Amsterdam in 2000, Riello contributed an oversized Monopoly board, allowing viewers to control a prostitution racket instead of the property market.

Antonio Riello - Background Antonio Riello was born in 1958 in the small town of Marostica near Venice. Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Riello received degrees in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Padova University and Architecture from Venezia University, as well as holding a variety of temporary and unusual careers throughout Europe – including time as a magician for a German TV game show.

He now divides his time between Venice and Milan. Antonio Riello – Vatican Air Force and Navy opens to the public on Thursday 27th October with a private view on Wednesday 26th October.