Not Only Biennale
Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore - Sean Scully
– Human
"I want to make available the journey
from the spiritual to the physical, and from the physical to the
spiritual."
Sean Scully
The Human exhibition, until October 13,
curated by Javier Molins, brings together
the powerful vision of the acclaimed contemporary artist Sean Scully and the majesty of San
Giorgio Maggiore, designed by the legendary 16th- century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Conceived especially for this presentation
throughout the Abbey, it is devoted
to the fundamental tension between our heart’s striving in a world of beauty
and struggle and our soul’s yearning for eternal transcendence.
Opulent Ascension
Basilica
Sean Scully - Opulent Ascension
Inspired by
the biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder,
which established a conduit between the world we inhabit and the one that lies
beyond, Scully’s soaring sculpture
rises over ten metres under the Basilica’s
dome. Comprised of stacked frames wrapped in felt of rich and varied colours,
"Opulent Ascension"
directs one’s gaze heavenwards through the oculus of the cupola.
Corridor
Sean Scully - Landline Gold – 2019
Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore - Angel
that crowned the top of the bell tower
The exhibition
features forty new and recent paintings, sculptures, works on paper and stained-glass
windows, it takes visitors on an intimate journey through the various artistic
fields that Scully has mastered
since the early 1970s. Scully’s unique, innovative vocabulary of horizontal and
vertical stripes, for which he is internationally renowned, which has now
embraced figurative composition, is on rich display throughout.
Sacrestia
Derived from
the verb "sacren", meaning "to make holy", the Sacristy is the space where sacred
services are prepared and in which hallowed objects are kept. Correspondingly,
this room is devoted to drawings that capture Scully’s initial artistic
impulses – the raw inklings from which his works are made.
Sacrestia
Sean Scully - works on paper
In these more
intimate pieces, the finesse and precision of the artist as a draughtsman and
craftsman is in full evidence. These drawings reveal just how much meditation,
ingenuity, and passion goes into creating the larger-scale paintings and
sculptures for which Scully is best
known.
Sean Scully - Illuminated Manuscript
Coro Maggiore
Sean Scully - Illuminated Manuscript - 2018–2019
Echoing the
mystery and charm of medieval illuminated manuscripts, which weave into a
single book the beauty of exalted words and imagery, Sean Scully has created a lustrous volume that chronicles the
making of his works for this exhibition. A repository of both verbal and visual
meditations, this remarkable resurrection of a bygone medium captures the
artist’s eloquence as both a writer and as an image-maker. The combination of
language and drawing creates an extraordinary music of the mind.
Officina – Manica Lunga
Sean Scully – Landline series
The eight
oil-on-aluminium paintings from Scully’s
acclaimed – Landline - series in the
Manica Lunga - Long Gallery - offer
visitors evocatively lyrical landscapes for contemplation. The intense
horizontal bands suggest not only a map of exterior landscapes that our bodies
inhabit in the physical world, but an undiscovered spiritual realm within us.
In seemingly simple arrangements of stacked strata, which vary in number from
six to seven bars, the – Landlines - echo the endless compression of
existential layers – physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual – that
comprise us.
Officina – Manica Lunga
Sean Scully – Landline series
Sean Scully - Two Windows - 2019
Sean Scully - Sleeper Stack – 2019
“The rhythmic objectiveness of these deeply committed
works,” wrote Scully in 1998 of van Gogh’s oeuvre, “is what impressed me so. I took this idea to an extreme, so that in an
abstract painting everything was something, in a sense that it had the force of
an object.”
Sean Scully – Arles Abend Vincent 2 – 2015
Pastel Room
Sean Scully – Kind of Red - 2014
Works on paper
These soft-focused
siblings of Scully’s core themes and passions, for example a work commemorating
the cultural and philosophical legacies of ancient Greece – “Doric” - or a five-part
tribute to the music of Miles Davis.
“My work is an attempt to release the spirit.”
one of three
Having
abandoned figuration five decades ago, Scully returns to the style with three
portraits from a new series, titled Madonna they are based on photographs
taken of his wife and son on the island of Eleuthera.
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