Photograph courtesy Hogan
Casa Artom: Wake Forest University – BIG Bambu. The Huge Bambu installation by the Starn twins at Casa Artom on the Grand Canal was hosted by Stefano Tonchi, Alexia Niedzielski, Charlotte Casiraghi, Andrea Della Valle and Elizabeth von Guttman.
Basilica di San Giorgio: Ascension – Anish Kapoor. Anish kapoor presents a sit-specific installation in the Palladian Basilica of San Giorgio: Called Ascension, a column of white smoke rises from the floor where the nave and the transept meet. A cross between sacred and irreverent, the smoke is also an ephemeral boundary between substance and the immaterial. “In this work,” say the artist, “there is also the thought of Moses who followed a column of smoke, a column of light, in the desert.”
Fondazione Giorgio Cini: Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images. Until September 18 on the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore in the Sala del Convito of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is the exhibition Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images. The exhibition of contemporary and antique tapestries, embroidery and carpets was curated by Adam Lowe and Jerry Brotton and produced and organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in collaboration with Factum Arte, Madrid. The exhibition of 20 large-scale works ranging from invaluable late 15th-century tapestries to Boetti’s hand-woven tapestries and contemporary works made by combining the mechanical Jacquard loom and digital art, highlights how “woven images” are once more at the heart of artistic practice. In addition to several significant antique tapestries from the Cini Foundation and private collections, the exhibition features contemporary tapestries and carpets by Azra Aksamija, Lara Baladi, Alighiero Boetti, Manuel Franquelo, Carlos Garaicoa, Craigie Horsfield, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, Grayson Perry and Marc Quinn. Above: Grayson Perry – Walthamstow Tapestry. Grayson Perry’s enormous Walthamstow Tapestry, 2009, (290 x 1500 cm), wool and silk, Flanders Tapestries, starts from the Medieval tapestries beloved of Flemish weavers to make a vast tormented, personal allegory of the evils of contemporary life. The artist weaves a tale that is a highly subjective translation of the “Seven Ages of Man”. Following the classic tapestry direction from left to right, he combines the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary and Christ in confessional, autobiographical elements interwoven with the modern consumerist icons. The result is a personal, profoundly idiosyncratic woven image that becomes the basis for the “craftsman” Perry to make further rhythmic transformations.
Magazini del Sale 266: Anselm Keifer – Salt of the Earth. Anselm Keifer’s Salt of the Earth exhibition in the appropriate space, Magazini del Sale 226 until November 30 was curated by Germano Celant. The Title Salt of the Earth refers to Keifer’s interest in the alchemical process, representing the aspiration of a creature being to an nearly golden perfection of existence. According to the artist, in order to awake from the past and find a new spiritual dimension, a person has to pass owing to various stages of mutation; art is an instrument to facilitate this step and rebirth. For this reason, in his paintings and sculptures, Keifer makes use of symbolic process like electrolysis, materials like lead, gold and salt, which in ancient tradition were used for a metaphorical transformation of the self. The exhibition consists of a vitrine, Athanor, a painting, Arche (Ark) and an installation Das Salz der Erde (Salt of the Earth) in which photographs of landscapes, mounted on lead panels are suspended.
Palazzo Contarini dagli Scrigni: Venice in Venice – Glow and Reflection – Venice California Art from 1960 to Present. Until July 31 at Palazzo Contarini dagli Scrigni the fabulous exhibition Venice in Venice – Glow and Reflection – Venice California Art from 1960 to Present curated by Tim Nye and Jacqueline Miro. More than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California collaborated together to tell the tale of the birth of the L.A. art scene, by mounting Venice in Venice, transporting a group of revolutionary artists from the 1960s in Venice California, to the city of Venice, Italy. These artists travel significant metaphoric waters from their roots squatting in an abandoned amusement park, which housed many of their studios as they first started their phenomenological experiments in the mid 1960s, to the opulent Palazzo Contarini dagli Scrigni on the Grand Canal. As the Academia Bridge unites the two banks of the Grand Canal, a fleet of psychedelic gondolas designed by Billy Al Bengston unites Venice in Venice to Palazzo Grassi, making a space-time continuum of Venetian tradition with the 1960s polish. Psychedelic paintings, neon lights, and sounds merge in a surprising way with the Gothic architecture of the palazzo.
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