I stopped by P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens today to catch the exhibition “Senso Unico [4]” before it closed on Monday. Among the eight contemporary Italian visual artists featured, I was pleasantly surprised to find the work of Angelo Filomeno, an artist whose bejeweled work in machine embroidery I hav

e admired for some time. 

Filomeno, who hails from Ostuni (Brindisi province, Puglia), has been living and working in New York City since 1992. His mother taught him to sew as a child and when he was seven-years-old he apprenticed with a local tailor for six years. He received a degree in painting from Accademia di Belle Arti di Lecce and worked in the design studios of major fashion houses in Milan.

His embroidered work is sumptuous, often including semi-precious stone on silk. This attention to craftsmanship works in dynamic tension to the highly allegorical subject matter with its overt Rabelaisian proclivities, e.g., a vomiting peacock or a shitting philosopher.

While the “Senso Unico” exhibit is closing, Filmeno’s piece “ Death of Blinded Philosopher” can be seen at another New York exhibit, “Pricked: Extreme Embroidery [5]” at the Museum of Arts and Design until March 9^th.