Gianluca Cosci

Gianluca Cosci  Senza Titolo, 2022. Oil on found painting, 89 x 70 cm. Installation  view at Queens Brussels

My practice investigates the tension between visibility and erasure, presence and disappearance. I am drawn to acts of obliteration, appropriation and transformation — gestures that challenge the authority of images and the permanence of cultural symbols. Through photography, painting, and modified ready-mades, I explore how the erasure or disruption of images can generate new meanings, turning loss into creation.

Gianluca Cosci  View of the solo exhibition Denied Images, 2022. Sint-Lukasgalerie, Brussels

Iconoclasm lies at the core of my work, not as an act of destruction but as an aesthetic and philosophical method. By intervening in existing visual materials — such as found paintings or photographs of cultural sites — I would like to underline the active role of the viewer. My process often involves both physical and conceptual manipulation: concealing, layering, or cropping images to subvert their original logic and question what remains visible or knowable.

Gianluca Cosci  Old Masters III, 2023. Hahnemühle print mounted on Diasec Plexi 53,3 x 80 cm. Installation view at Queens Brussels

I am fascinated by artistic acts that test the limits of creation and position art as a space for critical and subversive thought. The radicalism of iconoclasm, in my view, opens essential questions about the meaning of artistic production within its social, economic, and institutional frameworks.

Gianluca Cosci  From left to right: Untitled, 2023. Oil on found painting, 114.5 X 89 cm. Untitled, 2023. Oil on found painting, 120 x 93 cm. Untitled, 2023. Oil on found painting, 75 x 65 cm. Installation  view at Queens Brussels

Ultimately, I see my iconoclastic practice as a metaphor for the mechanisms of power that shape perception and induce blind spots. Yet within this critique emerges the possibility of renewed vision — a polysemic space where meaning remains open and the viewer becomes an active participant in its completion.