Luigi Ontani (b. 1943) is one of the most influential and remarkable Italian artists working today. Ontani’s idiosyncratic practice represents a radical counterposition to the approach adopted by Arte Povera in the years in which he came to prominence.

His photographs, drawings, installations, performances, and tableaux vivants engage with an extraordinarily rich Western and Eastern iconographical tradition. Ontani is often the subject of his own work, appearing in the guise of mythical figures drawn from history, religion, and literature, and drawing on sources that are both temporally and geographically distant.

Ontani began his career in the 1970s and became widely known for his tableaux vivants: photographed and videotaped performances in which he presented himself in a variety of incarnations—from Pinocchio to Dante, Saint Sebastian to Bacchus—personifying historical, mythological, literary, and popular themes. Throughout his career, Ontani has expressed himself through a wide range of techniques, from the oggetti pleonastici made in plaster to the stanza delle similitudini, constructed with objects cut from corrugated fiberboard. These techniques are not ends in themselves, but rather occasions to experiment and to develop variations on the subjects that most deeply engage the artist: a “transhistorical” journey through myth, the mask, the symbol, and iconographic representation.

Recent solo exhibitions include exhibitions in New York (2011), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2009), and MoMA PS1 and MAMbo (2008). Group exhibitions include Manifesta (2008); Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1990); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1981); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1982).