Once it was from this Harbour that ships would enter the city, whereas now it is the center of Francois Pinault collection, a contemporary artistic production; La Punta della Dogana.
Anyone who has been to Venice surely noticed La Punta della Dogana that separates the Canal Grande from Canale della Giudecca.
Only rarely in my life it happened that i've admired not only a collection, but also the Museum's architecture by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who chose to keep the storage structure of the adjacent building and to maximize the original inside space.
More or less in the center of the building he created a high space, a sort of
pin, made of glossy reinforced concrete, something that really characterizes his
style. The exhibition space revolves around this pin.
The old structure and the new one fully coexist in a perfect match between the past and the future. On the big windows that look at the Canal he placed a grid that reminds of the one realized by Carlo Scarpa and that come from the Venetian craftmanship, this time realized with a contemporary feeling.
Punta della Dogana Museum hosts temporary exhibitions. The one currently on display is called "Elogio del Dubbio", Praise of the Doubt, there are both historical works and contemporary ones that deal with the topic of the doubt, discussing about certainty of the identity, the relationship among the intimate private dimension and the one of the artistic works, following a tematical way on the strengths and weaknesses of the human condition.
The curator, Caroline Bourgeoise, says that leveraging emblematic works of the '60ies, the exhibition reaches to more contemporary works, celebrating the doubt in its most dynamic aspects and the strength against prejudices.
Every work has a private space but interacts with the other thanks to Ando's work and its usability. Among the artists of the exhibition, Edward Kienholtz, Donald Judd, Maurizio Cattelan, Sigmar Polke, Jeff Koons, Roni Horn, Tatiana Trouvé, and many others. One of my favorite works is the one by Edward Kienholz, titled Roxy.
It's an environmental painting, considered one of the first installation in art history started in 1943 and completed only 18 years later. The work talks about some of the illnesses that afflicts our society: solitude, sex obsession, social and racist violence. Protagonist of the work is a Las Vegas brothel of the '40ies that is inspired to a teenager experience of the artist, and it is recreated with a living room with lights, ashtrays full of sigarettes, an old juke box, a slot machine...
Comments
I enjoy the articles written by Enrico Constantini. The photos that acoompany them are always a delight to the eye. His contributing articles are very informative and interesting.
Posted by: Jenn | January 27, 2013 at 15:44PM