The artist's technically dazzling works are in the portrait tradition, steeped in historical atmosphere and sobriety. On closer inspection, however, they reveal a subversive vein of humour and unexpected anachronisms that serve to upset our assumptions while remaining wonderfully seductive.
Rocco thus manages to glide between two worlds, proposing classical images revisited in a modern key.
The heart of the exhibition is centred on a series of paintings inspired by the French Romantic painter Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's Portrait de jeune homme, which is in the Louvre.
Reminiscent of Francis Bacon's obsession with Veláquez's Portrait of Innocent X, Rocco insistently reworks Prud'hon's bewitching work in a cycle of increasing distortions that clearly depart from its source while paying homage to his revered work.
