Dysfunctional
- rethinks the boundaries of art
Ca’ d’Oro
Dysfunctional
On the occasion of the Venice Biennale,
Carpenters Workshop Gallery, in partnership with Lombard Odier Group, presents Dyfunctional, an engaging
exhibition of collectible art-design, until November
24 at the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery alla Ca’d’Oro on the Canal
Grande. The exhibition presents works by established and
emerging artists who intend to break the thin borders between art, architecture
and design. The site-specific works fuse an extraordinary technique and a
lively artistic-emotional expression.
Verhoeven
Twins – Shape of Water Collection
Jeroen and Joep Verhoeven
The art installation is a mystical
constellation of feather-light and supple impressions of bubbles whose iridescent
surfaces reflect and refract light around the room. In a sense, the work
closely mirrors Venice itself, appearing so fragile, yet possessing a
steadfastness that exceeds expectations.
Verhoeven
Twins – Moments of Happiness – 2019
Real
Time XL The Artist by Maarten Baas is a series of 12-hour films, indicating time by
erasing and re-drawing the hands minute by minute, which shows Baas, as an artist in his atelier where
he crafts a narrative which addresses different aspects of passing time:
getting older, moving forward and looking back.
Maarten
Baas – Real Time XL The
Artist by Maarten Baas – 2019
“Always been about the distillation of
everything I’ve ever admired and wanted to combine…”
Rick Owens
talking about his furniture
With Double Bubble, Owens continues his
quest for his brutalist idyll, utilizing natural plywood as a stoic, grand
gesture, that allows the Orso leather
upholstering to flourish. In this way it is a confluence of art and design
principles, that allows the viewer to sit comfortably, or to forget function
and observe it as an artistic object. In this setting it represents yet another
confluence, between history and modernity. Its harsh brutalistic lines are
contrasted with the ornate intricacies of the Ca’ d’Oro.
Rick Owens – Double Bubble – 2013
Photograph and copyright by Manfredi
Bellati
“It is the endemic porosity and fragility of all boundaries and the
intrinsic futility, or at least the irreparably temporary nature and the
incurable revocability of any border definition. All boundaries are weak,
fragile and porous.”
Zygmunt Bauman
Walls are
raised to protect, divide, but also to define ourselves. Through them you can
generate the narration of a society, history, or interaction of people with
nature and with others. And today, more than ever, it is a relevant subject. The
installation immediately establishes a connection with the important artistic
heritage of Ca’ d’Oro, echoing the
historicity of the building and evoking the ethereal past of the Serenissima with its splendour. At the
same time, it leaves the visitor in a gravitational dimension: somewhere
between a monumental clash and an intimate welcome.
Vincenzo De Cotiis - Ode – 2019
Dubourg was
struck by this room in the Ca’ d’Oro
in which this work sits. It is an open
room and thus does not need a door to enter or to leave. But it is a room in which works of intense
suffering are displayed – Mantegna’s
Saint Sebastian and Alessandro Vittoria’s Virgin – making it impossible to
escape this misery. Thus, he has
created a threshold, that leads beyond the purgatory of human suffering. Each individual terracotta tablet is a
story, an experience, just like the tablets engraved with the first writing
symbols that filled the first libraries of human memory. This clay is the
original material of human structures, is suffused with our heritage. The tablets reflect the pain of the Ca’ d’Oro
works they face.
Vincent Dubourg - Door of Paradise – 2019
In his latest
series, Renegade, instead of
performing the act of either artist or designer, Joep Van Lieshout turns any object that he gets his hands on, even
his own sculpture, into lamps, making every work as valuable or invaluable as
the other.
Atelier Van Lieshout – Renegade – 2019
Studio Drift’s Fragile Future uses the
fragility of dandelion seeds as a strength and poses its ability to make a
meaningful connection with a complete different - human – system. Bringing
Fragile Future and the masterwork of Andrea
Mantegna together, is to Studio Drift, the starting point of bridging the
gap between the moment where we started losing the connection and the moment we
start seeing it again.
Studio Drift – Fragile Future - Chandelier Venice
Mantegna – 2019
Virgil Abloh’s inspiration stemmed from using the current state of reality in Venice.
Using the foundation of being an architect and an engineer, Abloh was
compelled to contextualize this conceptualization into a “sinking” installation
which acts as a time stamp signifying a permanent object that recalls a temporary
instance of the city of Venice.
Virgil Abloh – “Alaska Alaska” Acqua Alta – 2019
Australian
artist Charles Trevelyan experiments with the interaction between form and
texture. His work can echo the
underlying tenets of Venetian Gothic, the style in which the Ca’ d’Oro was
built.
Charles Trevelyan – Circumspect – 2015
"This is a work of art that chooses
the spectators and watches them.”
Audience is a
singular piece in movement, not a mobile shifting in the wind. Random International designed Audience
according to the principle that linked the spectator to technology. Audience
proposes a relationship with others, it reacts to the presence of people. The
encounter is truly subjective; do objects really have a soul?
Random
International – Audience – 2008
“Venice has always had particular
resonance in my personal history and my imagination. It is the birthplace of
great painters and glassblowing, but it is also a place emblematic of modern
art thanks to the influence of Peggy Guggenheim and the artists who surrounded
her. More than a functional object, this piece is intended in effect as
sculpture-furniture, able to contend with the Byzantine or Renaissance works
that one finds just about everywhere in Venice. Its golden patina of course
reflects the Ca d’Oro - the Golden Palace - while its filigreed facade was
inspired by Venice’s stained-glass windows and the gilded Burano lace that was
used to create Carnival masks.”
Ingrid Donat – Klimt – 2017
Studio Job’s Sinking Ship is an allergy to the current political moment in Europe. It represents the fall of old Europe, and how this reflects
the recent political sentiments in the time we are living in, with all the
treats and instability, the pretentiousness and manipulation of the
politics. With this work, Studio Job
reminds us from our own inevitable sinking – perhaps even into the Canal Grande that the Ca’ d’Oro faces.
Studio Job – Sinking Ship – 2015
Stuart Haygarth’s Tide Colour Cahndelier is
created from plastic objects collected on the British coastline. Each element is different in shape and form, yet
they collate to form one perfect sphere.
The sphere evokes the shape of the moon whose force created the tide
that washed these items ashore.
Stuart Haygarth – Tide Colour – 2005
Photograph and copyright by Manfredi
Bellati
Nacho
Carbonell’s
tree-like, organic sculptures transform the monumental courtyard of 15th
century mosaics into a forest of light. Their shimmering texture reference the
gilt and polychrome decorations which once adorned the palazzo’s facade and
their cocoon metal mesh shapes echo the quatrefoils that decorate the windows
of Ca’ d’Oro (‘the golden house’).
Carbonell states that he would like the public to engage with the objects as
much as they can by walking through them, passing underneath, exploring them as
more than a collection of individual pieces.
Nacho
Carbonell – Inside a Forest Cloud Chandelier - 113-2019
In the
courtyard of Ca’d’Oro, Lamy
collaborates with a series of artists to create an immersive boxing
installation. Hanging from cage like construction, boxing bags act as a visual
metaphor, asking the question; What Are We Fighting For?. Exploring wider cultural,
spiritual and social statements, she initiates a dialogue centered upon what
we, in the present moment, need to face, challenge, celebrate in our lives.
Michele Lamy – Lamyland: What Are We Fighting For? – 2019
Wendell Castle’s Above within Beyond, one
of his later works, is one of sensuous physicality. Cast in bronze, a rarity in
Castle’s works, this is a homage to the love held by Baron Giorgio Franchetti, and
Marin Contarini before him, for exceptional works made of the finest
materials.
Wendell Castle – Above within Beyond – 2014
With his
series Ocean Memories, Mathieu Lehanneur
offers a surrealist and materialized vision of a sea frozen in its
movement. Like freeze-frame in three dimensions,
the pieces capture the subtle reliefs of waves and currents, and embody the
surface of the sea. He pays homage to Venice by working in green marbles and
granites whose shades echo the nearby lagoon.
Mathieu Lehanneur – Ocean Memories Acqua Alta
– 2019 - detail