Luca Buvoli Is Not a Superhero

NEW YORK—The Italian-born, New York-based artist Luca Buvoli has been a presence in the American art scene for approximately 20 years. His fanciful, yet deeply intelligent work—including Not-a-Superhero (1992–2001), Flying—Practical Training (1997–ongoing), and most recently, A Very Beautiful Day After Tomorrow—Un Bellissimo Dopodomani (2007)—has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (1999), the Queens Museum of Art (2001), and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2007), among other institutions, and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. This summer he has realized perhaps his greatest success to date, participating in curator Robert Storr’s exhibition at the 52nd Venice Biennale, which runs through November 21.

Buvoli’s project for Venice, an energetic multipart expansion of the A Very Beautiful Day After Tomorrow installation he created for the ICA earlier this year, occupies over 5,000 square feet in the entrance to the Arsenale. Like much of his art, it is ambitious in theme and execution and falls into that ambiguous genre known as “multimedia,” combining sculpture, videos, painting, and mosaic [see video excerpts here and here].

ARTINFO spoke to Buvoli about his Biennale installation, delegating work to assistants, and the "essential moment" of an artwork.

Luca, when I visited your studio in May just before you took off for Venice, you had four or five assistants. Is this a typical number for you?

Depending on the project and deadline, the studio expands and contracts from one part-time assistant to a maximum of nine—like early this year.

Have you always worked with assistants?

The process of working with regular assistants is still relatively new to me. In my Not-a-Superhero project, all works were produced by Luca Buvoli Comics, a fictional company that made comic books, animated films, action figures, and posters—all of them hand-made solely by me. Mimicking the mass-produced format and scope of Marvel and DC and replacing it with my scratchy collages and sculptures made of urban debris was a financial necessity for me, but it was also a part of the work’s existential investigation of identity.

With the Flying–Practical Training method, I focused on the role of a made-up character, Professor M.a.S., who instructs unassisted human flight. At the same time, I translated this idea of “teaching” by hiring and training a few assistants to help design my unusual catalogs/artist’s books and to cast and sand the more cleanly produced sculptural works.

At present, I am a “polyglot” artist, involved in many media, and I benefit a lot from the technical expertise in sculptural fabrication and digital realms of two specialized assistants. At times, I also have worked with very helpful assistants who have strong writing, office, and organizational skills, but this has less to do with the production than with the distribution of the work.

What tasks do you delegate and which do you keep for yourself?

I do all the research, formulate the theoretical basis of each project, and make most if not all of the creative and aesthetic decisions. I sometimes share these thoughts and interests with one or two assistants when I write proposals or project descriptions and I ask them to proof my English, but at times I prefer to see the assistants’ responses only at a later stage of my work.

Some assistants are thirsty for knowledge and want to talk about the theoretical or technical aspects of my work. I enjoy suggesting readings and engaging in discussions with them, which is also a good way for me to test an early response to the issues raised by the work. But when we’re up against a deadline, we barely have time to share a few words on the status of the project over lunch.

Tell me about A Very Beautiful Day After Tomorrow. At what point did you bring an extensive team of assistants on board?

This was an unusual project. We had a tight deadline and the work was extremely ambitious, with two very large sculptures, five videos, many works on paper, and a large mosaic. Rob Storr had invited and assigned me the first room (about 5,000 square feet) at the Arsenale only last November, when I was completing the project with the same title for the ICA in Philadelphia. At the time I was working only with one new assistant, Phil Penberthy.