Vincent Gagliostro

Mr. Gagliostro joined the New York art world in 1972, studying at Parsons School of Design, with many notalble artists such as Larry Rivers and Kes Zapkus (his mentor). He divided his time between the disciplines of graphic design and painting, having his first one-man show in Washington DC, in 1976. A few years later, a growing health crisis in New York’s gay community would change his world enormously and in 1987, Gagliostro became a founding member of ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash !Power), and chaired the Communication and Graphics group. He has been noted in New York Magazine (September 30,1996 issue) for his “in your face” graphic, “make no apologies” style. And also sited by that magazine as one of the 6 most influential players in the gay community at that time. Andrew Sullivan defined ACTUP as “a new, distinctively gay kind of activism...the politics of style.” At the same time he became a member of the political art collective Gran Fury.

1997 brought about his first exhibition in Europe, (Hanover Germany). What is notable about the exhibition is when faced with a curator, a sociology professor who
 was intent on exhibiting a number of posters Gagliostro had done for ACT UP demonstrations along with a series of drawings, Gagliostro refused to exhibit the posters suggesting that it represented the end of something—that it was
 history “and for me it was not.” Gagliostro offered, instead, his first video work entitled “When Did I Forget?” it would reflect his politics at the time of the exhibit. “I would come to realize the identifying effect my work as a political activist had — and continues to have on my work as a visual artist. In the early 90’s Gagliostro created with three friends a quarterly journal titled, xxxFRUIT, which was commissioned by the Whitney Museum for an on-line version. At the same time he became the creative director of QW, a New York weekly Gay news magazine. Most recently his focus has been on multi- disciplinary installations with an emphasis on film/video. His film work has been shown in film festivals such as ASVOFF at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Cannes, the New York Armory Show/Pulse Art Fair, and Scope/New. His most recent exhibition, was titled, (1)Case, in Paris 2010. His work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, New York Public Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Cooper Hewitt Museum, NY, Library of Congress, Washington, Wellcome Trust, Great Britain. Gagliostro has completed the script for his first feature film, After Louie, which he will direct.