David LaChapelle: unique, with a post-pop and surreal style, iconic and irreverent, different from the others because it brings a marked identity. A polyhedric artist who expresses himself in the relationship with the image, transmitting his thoughts in a clear and determined way. He is the “special star” of the RUFA Contest 2019 which will take place on Wednesday, June 5 at the Teatro Brancaccio at 7 pm, in Via Merulana in Rome.David LaChapelle’s works are present in numerous important public and private collections, including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Tel Aviv, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, The National Portrait Gallery in London, the Fotographfiska Museet in Stockholm and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Compared to a few years ago he chose to be less sedentary: today he lives and works in the studios located between Los Angeles and Hawaii: between color and order, opposites and reversals that in this case converge.
“La Divina estetica” (The Divine Aesthetic) is the theme on which the 25 RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts students, selected by a jury that has analysed more than 100 design proposals, are called upon to confront each other in order to feed the contemporary vision of the RUFA Contest. This attitude is testified by the very high level of the guests who have made the show that concludes, year after year, this important cognitive experience: Stefan Sagmeister in 2015, Karim Rashid in 2016, Francis Kéré in 2017 and Shirin Neshat in 2018.
The novelties of the RUFA Contest 2019, the fifth, are not few. First of all, the new location: the Brancaccio Theatre. Historically considered the theatre of the Capital, it has welcomed the greatest artists, adapting to the times. And then the contents: the RUFA Contest is ready to decline “the kaleidoscopic expressions of the intellect, new media and languages” into the most varied forms, perfectly fitting into the study paths that the Academy of Fine Arts, legally recognized by the Miur, is now able to guarantee, exactly twenty years after its foundation.From this point of view, the RUFA Contest, under the guidance of the creator and artistic director Emanuele Cappelli, is a bridge between higher education and the creative professions.
An opportunity that RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts offers for free. Book your seat at the show on June 5 at the Teatro Brancaccio, 7 pm.