Leather costumes, nudity, disco music, neon lights, megaphones, dark rooms, pulsating lights. No, we are not in an exclusive, wild club, but at PAC in Milan for the first anthological exhibition of the artistic duo Lovett/Codagnone, composed of John Lovett (Allentown, 1962) and Alessandro Codagnone (Milan, 1967 – New Jersey, 2019). From the early to mid-1990s, the artists’ research developed around two human impulses: love and power, intimacy and society. They investigated with particular attention the intimate relationships that, like social microcosms, bind us to other living beings and are an expression of larger structures. Through a wealth of means and languages, Lovett and Codagnone deconstruct the concepts of normativity and pre-established roles, transforming the body and desire into resistance and political rebellion.
Lovett/Codagnone, “I Only Want You To Love Me”, PAC, 2025, installation view, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano, ph. credits Nico Covre, courtesy PAC e gli artisti
The background of the works is part of the theoretical reinterpretation of sadomasochistic practices and erotic pleasure that spread in the 1970s, classifying them as languages of struggle and opposition to patriarchy. The artists have collected and re-proposed this legacy within the contemporary art system; subverting sexual customs can also help to destabilise traditional hierarchies. In this way, leather aesthetics become a powerful tool for critically dismantling the collective ideology of “normality”, highlighting the relationships between power and desire. Throughout the exhibition, explicit references to sadomasochistic culture are both a visual provocation and a critical reinterpretation of prevailing cultural codes and social orders.
Lovett/Codagnone, “I Only Want You To Love Me”, PAC, 2025, installation view, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano, ph. credits Nico Covre, courtesy PAC e gli artisti
The overall panorama that unfolds before the observer is a multifaceted assemblage that stimulates the senses and the mind with visual and emotional affinities. The fluid continuum reaches its peak with I only want you to love me (2004-2025), a neon work that gives the entire solo exhibition its title. These luminous letters perpetually watch over, like an advertising sign, the cacophonous density of feelings and spirits that flow through the exhibition rooms, suggesting, however, a plea that in its simplicity hides an unfulfilled need and a tremendous drift.
Lovett/Codagnone, “I Only Want You To Love Me”, PAC, 2025, installation view, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano, ph. credits Nico Covre, courtesy PAC e gli artisti
Wandering, the gaze, the senses go further, stimulated by Death Disko: Last Dance (2015), in a nightclub lit up and destroyed by a wild crowd. But why? Perhaps the intention was to erase an imaginary world and a counterculture forever. The perception is that of a first inspection, after the devastation, in a place now melancholically shattered by the cry of morality and discipline. Is this a terrible fantasy? No, far from it. The references are real and dangerously topical: to be precise, the work refers to the climate of repression and condemnation in America, where, at the end of the 1970s, the “disco demolition” took place, carried out by the white, male, heterosexual class for whom emancipation and sexual freedom constituted a dangerous threat.
Lovett/Codagnone, “I Only Want You To Love Me”, PAC, 2025, installation view, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano, ph. credits Nico Covre, courtesy PAC e gli artisti
Alternating with neon lights, darkness and sounds, naked bodies stand out in After Roxy (1998-2015) and portraits of couples in Greetings (1996), scattered throughout several rooms, captured as they embrace and pose in a clear act of resistance. The photographs show how fragile the apparent stability of social concepts of identity and family really is; peering at the images – like strangers caught snooping at the framed photos above the sideboards – relationships are dissected and rethought, in the name of a body language that is a new grammar, both sensory and political.
Lovett/Codagnone, “I Only Want You To Love Me”, PAC, 2025, installation view, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano, ph. credits Nico Covre, courtesy PAC e gli artisti
At the end of the tour, as you head towards the exit, you feel a heaviness in your soul. You wish you could stay there forever, and the time spent in those rooms seems insufficient, with the feeling that there is more to see on the shiny surfaces and in the dark rooms. The exhibition is a disturbing and seductive ritual: you feel emotional vertigo that oscillates between languid tension and melancholic nostalgia. It is not only a political exhibition, but also a delicate diary documenting the lives of two individuals bound to each other with all the imperfections that come with it, as well as profound historical and social changes. Lovett/Codagnone portray love and sexuality as forms of resistance and dissent against uniformity, leaving an implicit question: if the norm represses, can intimacy restore real freedom to alternative bodies and unconventional practices?
Info:
Lovett/Codagnone, I only want you to love me
curated by Diego Sileo
04/07/2025 – 14/09/2025
PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea
Via Palestro, 14, 20121, Milano
PAC | Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea
Irene Follador (Venice, 1997) is an emerging critic and curator. She graduated first in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and then she obtained a master’s degree at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has been collaborating with Juliet Art Magazine for a long time and, at the same time, she carries out her independent curatorial practice; her research and interest mainly tends towards works of moving images and new Media within the contemporary art system.
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