ICÔNES. PUNTA DELLA DOGANA
2023
Review by Beatrice
After the exhibition, the work Ttéia 1, C is presented, an enormous installation of taut golden threads in space that appear and disappear according to the light and the position of the visitor. A surreal atmosphere created by the Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, made of rays of light that stand out in the darkness, making the situation hypnotic and magnetic due to the grandeur of the installation and the fragility of the threads.
In room 2, we find Philippe Parreno's Quinta del Sordo, which scrutinizes and represents with a voyeuristic gaze the video of the fourteen black paintings created by Francisco Goya in his house near Madrid between 1819 and 1823. In contrast to the mystical brilliance of religious depictions, the artist paints directly on the walls with predominant images of black, ochre, and earth.
The path divided into 18 rooms is accompanied by Joseph Kosuth's work, presented in Italian, English, and French; it is a sort of Ariadne's thread in the labyrinth constituted by Punta della Dogana, echoing the dialogue between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre published in Adieux. The theoretical and personal reflections of the couple alternate, doubts and statements among which the philosopher expresses above all faith in the power of art.
In room 6, David Hammons installs a large piece of black fabric, rarefied and worn out, over a large golden mirror, which almost disappears under the evident precariousness of the canvas, as if to indicate the impossibility of reflecting oneself or the real possibility of seeing oneself, finally. The evocative power linked to absence and disappearance in this way manages to express what can hardly be seen or said.
Room 9 encounters time that measures nothing but itself with Dayanita Singh: thirty-four tied bundles, differently knotted and with various shades of red, photographed to testify to the passing of time and the importance of preserved content to the gaze, while Danh Vo, in his work Untitled 2020, places the fragments of a religious sculpture that recalls icons carried on journeys, in war or on pilgrimages in a semi-open aluminum suitcase.
Under the turret in room 14, we find The Ninth Hour, one of Maurizio Cattelan's most iconic works, where, as in Nanni Moretti's film Habemus Papam, the pope becomes the incarnation of the contrast between power and vulnerability.
Finally, although with an incomplete overview, we arrive at room 15, in the turret of the ancient customs house, which houses the evocative and dizzying work of Kimsooja, To Breathe-Venice, where two mirrors placed on the floor unify the space, giving it at the same time a sensation of weightlessness... it feels like walking on crystal clear water, extending from the lagoon inside the building, allowing the perception of alterity between the conflict of subject and object. The polyphony of Mandala: Zone of Zero, in which Tibetan, Islamic, and Gregorian chants intertwine, completes this reiterated spatial experience that renders the experience metaphysical.
From April 2nd to November 26th, Punta della Dogana presents "Icons," a collective exhibition, with works primarily from the Pinault Collection. A reflection on the theme of the icon and the status of the image in contemporary times. The term "icon" has two meanings: its etymology refers to the concepts of "image" and "likeness," while its general use refers to religious painting, which particularly characterizes Eastern Christianity. In more recent times, the term has been associated with the idea of a model, an emblematic figure. The image — its ability to represent a presence, between appearance and disappearance, shadow and light, and to generate an emotion — is at the center of this exhibition conceived for the exhibition spaces of Punta della Dogana and the Venetian context, characterized by a strong connection with Byzantine East.
The exhibition pays particular attention to the relationship between the city of Venice and the icon. Since the end of the Middle Ages, Venetian art has been shaped through the synthesis of diverse influences — particularly Byzantine, Gothic, and Flemish — that translate the role of the Serenissima as a link between East and West. Venice is still today a crossroads where multiple horizons intersect and hybridize, providing a fertile ground for creation.
The city also constitutes a recurring source of inspiration for the Danish artist of Vietnamese origin Danh Vo or James Lee Byars. Some works are deeply rooted in this context as they revive the memory of the works exhibited in previous editions of the International Art Exhibition — the Venice Biennale, such as Lygia Pape's Ttéia of golden threads or Joseph Kosuth's textual and conceptual miniatures in 2007 at San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice. The art of Orthodox Russia, through the poetic film Andrei Rublev, dedicated to the fifteenth-century icon painter, is analyzed by Andrei Tarkovsky through the ability of images to embody, beyond the centuries and vicissitudes of history, "the idea of the absolute freedom of human spiritual potential." According to him, the art of the icon expresses "the need for a particular gaze on certain spiritual questions" and makes sensitive what remains in the immeasurable darkness of an invisible world. By taking root in the substrate of images, the poetics of the Russian director reopens the question of the becoming of the invisible and the spiritual in a contemporary world. The exhibition also makes sensitive the influence of other spiritualities that, from Asia to Africa, from Brazil to the United States, continue to nourish the works of the exhibited artists.
The exhibition aims to reveal the essence of the icon as a vector of passage towards possible transcendence, inviting to other states of consciousness, contemplation, meditation, and reflection, through a path of over 80 works, including masterpieces from the Pinault Collection, works never before exhibited in this occasion, and site-specific installations by 30 artists from different generations, born between 1888 and 1981. The works create spaces like pauses or "chapels" in the era of image saturation and their undue appropriation. Between figuration and abstraction, the exhibition invokes all dimensions of the image in the contemporary artistic context — painting, video, sound, installation, performance — and establishes unprecedented dialogues between emblematic artists of the Pinault Collection, including David Hammons and Agnes Martin, Kimsooja and Chen Zhen, Danh Vo and Rudolf Stingel, Sherrie Levine and On Kawara.
Curated by Emma Lavigne, General Director of the Pinault Collection, and Bruno Racine, Director and CEO of Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana.