Piero Bisello

Piero Bisello is an art writer based in Brussels. He has a background in art history and philosophy. He typically works as an art critic and editor, but moonlights as an artist working with text. His questions currently focus on two subjects: the concept of models and homers.

The former touches upon the multiple senses in which we use the word “model,” whether it refers to an architecture mock-up, an ideal thing to aspire to, a failed mathematical projection, an exhibition framework, a replica of a fly, or something else. Through publications, exhibitions, and lectures, Bisello asks why such a painfully complicated concept should be of any importance in the context of art. 

The other of Bisello’s current interests, that is, homers, has to do with putting some pressure on canonical ideas about art and labor. Even historically (see the 1970s book by Miklos Haratszi titled A Worker in a Worker's State), homers have been things, perhaps artworks, made with a certain critical attitude towards everything utilitarian, or at least everything conforming to norms we could most likely live without. Bisello’s work with homers has so far mostly consisted of a book he made titled A Few Homers, which was published by Surfaces Utiles in 2021; it is a printed catalog of things made precisely with the attitude described above, bringing together insiders and outsiders with the hope they would valuably mingle. A new chapter of this inquiry and book is in the offing and starts with the residency at KAOS.