BEA SCACCIA Groomed, 2026, installation view © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
NEW YORK,—Gagosian is pleased to announce Groomed, an exhibition of seven new paintings by Bea Scaccia that opens at the gallery’s Park & 75 location on September 22. The second in a series of solo presentations by different artists curated by Francesco Bonami, it is Scaccia’s debut exhibition with the gallery.
The paintings in Groomed depict elaborate, sumptuous scenes filled with accumulations of fabric and various accoutrements of feminine style including wigs, costume jewelry, shoes, belts, zippers, plastic chains, hair clips, bows, tassels, and faux fur. Backed by colorful curtains and patterned wallpaper, and occupied by chairs, beds, and ladders, these nighttime scenarios are illuminated by representations of fringed lamps, clip-on book lights, and precariously placed lit candles. The nocturnal atmosphere is reinforced by the matte surfaces that Scaccia achieves by mixing gesso with acrylic to mute the colors, reworking them with airbrush, and applying oil paint to selected details.
BEA SCACCIA Groomed, 2026, installation view © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
Incorporating an array of deliberately clashing textures and garish colors, these collections of objects come together to approximate faceless bodies and puppet like limbs that are sheathed in fishnet tights, positioned as if in arrested motion. These partially formed figures appear to attempt activities— sitting, reclining, reading, climbing, and exercising—that they cannot quite complete. Categorically situated between still life and figuration, Scaccia’s works depict an enigmatic realm in which inanimate accessories used for beautification approach, but never fully attain, human form.
BEA SCACCIA Training for the Broken, 2026 Acrylic and oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm) © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
While historical figure paintings often juxtapose drapery with bodies to convey refinement, style, and eroticism, the many ersatz materials represented in Groomed are overtly artificial. With their uncanny substitutes for human anatomy, Scaccia’s paintings evoke the Surrealists’ fetishized substitution of objects for figures, particularly in sculptures by Hans Bellmer. Her engagement with the subtexts of materials, abjection, and gender also parallels the work of Mike Kelley, Sarah Lucas, and others. In addition, the artist draws inspiration from magical realist literature, folktales involving metamorphosis and transformation, and the creativity of pop culture.
BEA SCACCIA Heels over Head—or Pillow Talk, 2026 Acrylic and oil on canvas, in 2 parts Overall: 60 x 108 inches (152.4 x 274.3 cm) © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
The exhibition’s largest painting, Heels over Head—or Pillow Talk (2026), is a diptych that parodies the reclining female figure of Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), as well as the Rococo subject of a woman reading in a boudoir, as seen in such paintings as Jean Honoré Fragonard’s Young Girl Reading (1769).
BEA SCACCIA Groomed, 2026, installation view © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
Rather than the expected contrast between painted flesh and fabric, it represents tangles of cloth and pillows held tenuously together on a bed, faceless but holding up a book. In other paintings, surrogates for figures occupy chairs, but without managing to fully sit on them. Holding dumbbells and contorted in yoga-like poses, they suggest a mania for fitness and physical self-improvement. Additional works feature ladders over which cloth and other materials are draped and dispersed, climbing nowhere, and hanging like marionettes.
BEA SCACCIA A Correct Way to Unravel, 2026 Acrylic and oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm) © Bea Scaccia Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
Bea Scaccia was born in Veroli, Italy, in 1978, and lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include My Hope Chest, Katonah Museum of Art, NY (2021). Group exhibitions include Homemade, Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY (2020); Fabrizio Clerici: L’atlante del meraviglioso, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2022); Fantastica: 18th Quadriennale d’Arte, Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome (2025–26); and Art Museum of West Virginia University, Morgantown (2026–27).
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BEA SCACCIA Groomed is curated by Francesco Bonami. There was an opening reception on Tuesday, September 22, 6–8pm The exhibition will conclude on December 23, 2026 at the Park & 75, 821 Park Avenue, New York location. For Bea’s ’s biographical information and exhibition history, please visit here. More information about the artists represented by Gagosian and other exhibitions at the gallery, please visit the gallery’s site here. The gallery can also be found on Pinterest, X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Artsy.
