We live in a culture obsessed with self-optimization, where clothing, cosmetics, and accessories often threaten to eclipse the human subjects they are meant to adorn.
In her stunning gallery debut Groomed, curated by Francesco Bonami at Gagosian Park & 75 in New York through December 23, 2026—Italian-born, New York-based artist Bea Scaccia brilliantly unravels this modern obsession.
The Alchemy of Abjection: Technique and Atmosphere
Occupying a mysterious borderland between still life and uncanny figuration, Scaccia’s seven new paintings construct sumptuous, nocturnal boudoirs drenched in garish colors and clashing textures. Wigs, costume jewelry, faux fur, plastic chains, zippers, and cascading bolts of fabric tumble across chairs, ladders, and beds.
To achieve this dreamlike, light-absorbing atmosphere, Scaccia mixes gesso with acrylic to completely mute the canvas surface, reworking the planes with an airbrush before applying precise oil details. Illuminated by the flickering glow of clip-on book lights, fringed lamps, and precarious candles, the settings pulse with a quiet, unsettling theatricality.
Puppets of Progress: The Incomplete Figure
Rather than traditional flesh, Scaccia’s canvases are populated by surrogate bodies stitched together from the detritus of fashion and adornment. Faceless and bound in fishnet tights, these puppet-like limbs attempt mundane human routines—sitting, reclining, reading, and exercising—only to find themselves caught in arrested motion.
In works like Heels over Head—or Pillow Talk (2026), Scaccia offers a biting parody of Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Jean Honoré Fragonard’s Rococo classic Young Girl Reading (1769). Instead of painted skin, a tangled mountain of pillows and fabric holds a book aloft on a bed, subverting centuries of artistic convention regarding female refinement and eroticism. Elsewhere, figures clutch dumbbells in impossible yoga poses or drape themselves over ladders that lead nowhere, capturing our modern mania for physical self-improvement.
A Lineage of the Uncanny
Scaccia’s work strikes a fascinating dialogue with twentieth-century avant-gardes. Her fetishized substitution of objects for anatomy recalls the unsettling dolls of Hans Bellmer, while her exploration of abjection and gender echoes the sculptural subversions of Mike Kelley and Sarah Lucas. Blending these influences with the metamorphic logic of magical realism and pop culture, Scaccia constructs an enigmatic realm where inanimate accessories desperately approach, but never quite attain, humanity.
In Groomed, Bea Scaccia holds up an absurd, glittering mirror to contemporary anxieties. By replacing the human form with an avalanche of consumer ornamentation, she exposes the fragile choreography of modern identity—reminding us that in our endless quest to groom and optimize ourselves, we risk becoming beautifully constructed artifacts.