Art forgery as
a class weapon?
water-based paint, linen canvas, wooden frame, coffee, dust, tea, paper, ink, rust accelerator, mordant, baking soda, staples
2024
The work consists of two canvases by Emilio Vedova, from the De America series from 77', made with the help of an art forger who, in order to have a stable income, has been forging artworks for merchants and galleries for years, alongside his artistic practice. The encounter with this person has highlighted the subtle and ambiguous area of coincidence between the figure of the artist and that of the forger: the same technical skills and inventiveness that usually contribute to the production of an original work can also be used in the production of a fake: from the emulation of the pictorial style to the reproduction of the signature, up to the ingenious ageing of the paint.
The idea of creating two fake, identical paintings, by Emilio Vedova was born from the assignment, between 2023 and 2024, of a studio at Palazzo Carminati, the same one in which the Venetian painter worked during the 1960s. Vedova's painting has been welcomed from the beginning as a form of political and aesthetic resistance to the alienation of the industrial world, contrasting it with the artist’s authentic, expressive and unrepeatable gesture. Creating two fake Vedovas, identical to each other, instead raises the suspicion that painting has not been spared from the commodification imposed by the market and that its saving promise has, in the end, been absorbed into serial production.
The title “Art forgery as a class weapon?”, taken from the sensational title of an unrelated Youtube video, opens up the possibility of thinking about the forgery of works of art as a tool of class struggle with which established, emerging or unknown artists can take revenge against an oppressive and elitist system by undermining the market that supports it.