Angelo Filomeno, “Betrayed Witches”

Installation view

Photograph: Courtesy Galerie Lelong

Fanged skulls, half-skeletal fish and strange spiny insects depicted in exquisite embroidery on tall, silk panels lend gothic glamour to Angelo Filomeno’s exhibition, as does a coldly glittering palette of black and silver. Once employed by the fashion industry in Milan, this Italian-born artist uses almost fetishistic craftsmanship to spectacular effect.

Smell of Spleen (2008) features a turkey’s head, each fold of its leathery skin limned with metallic silver floss. A protruding stainless-steel spike marks its eye, while innumerable tiny crystals sparkle in the background like stars in a hoary sky. Tendrils hang down from its severed neck, giving the effect of dripping or, better yet, fraying, as if to acknowledge that the image is a drawing in thread.

The presence of death is more implied in Clean Cathedral (2008), a cross pieced together from watered silk with a moiré pattern recalling wood grain. Embroidered cords at its arms and foot suggest that the body of Christ has just been removed. Yet at 13 feet high, it feels less an object of Catholic devotion than an imposing black monolith.A sculpture of a skeleton, blown in black glass, sprawls on a mirrored plinth in Cold (2007). Claws sprout from its digits, horny protuberances from its joints and vertebrae, and onyx beads spew from its mouth. Two huge beetles attack one hand while the other grasps a black satin drape that unfurls onto the floor. Combining baroque memento mori with the means and materials of haute couture and luxury decor, the artist imagines death and decay as the most elegant, if sinister, of modes. Like his compatriot Francesco Vezzoli, Filomeno pushes style and emotionalism to campy, fabulous extremes.

—Joseph R. Wolin