Enzo D'Agostino: The Artist Who Wants to Exit Contemporary Art

Key facts

• Enzo D'Agostino is an Italian artist active in the UK, founder and director of Atlas Space in London until 2020.
• He trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and Wimbledon College of Art.
• His practice includes painting, drawing, photography, installation, and experimentation with materials such as paper, canvas, wood, clay, porcelain, and neon light.
• He worked in the US from 2007 to 2010, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in China from 2012 to 2019, mainly in Jingdezhen.
• He advocates for an 'un-contemporary' approach, urging artists to resist dominant contemporary taste and seek beauty and truth.
• His concept of 'artcality' posits a radical coincidence between artist and artwork, echoing Benedetto Croce's aesthetics.
• His work 'Withdrawal' (2014) consists of nine porcelain panels with inscriptions and images related to the 'Romantic Face' cycle.
• He critiques the contemporary art system as self-referential, keeping art artificially alive through institutions.
• He proposes a voluntary anachronism, recovering Renaissance and 19th-century traditions as a critical device.
• The profile was written by Domenico Ioppolo and published on Artribune in August 2026.