#BiennaleArte2022 - Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia - Marc Quinn - HistoryNow

“The creation of the HistoryNow series has been at once a meditative and cathartic interaction with the turbulent world in which we live now. It is a mining of the liminal zone we all inhabit, between the viscerally real and the abstractedly virtual which is becoming the present state of existence. By showing the works in the National Archaeological Museum, I am reminded that however new our issues feel, many are manifestations of issues that humans have faced since the beginnings of art and indeed the beginnings of human interaction. I couldn't think of a better place to show them in Venice than at the National Archaeological Museum."

Marc Quinn 

 

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia 

Marc Quinn - HistoryNow

On View during La Biennale di Venezia - Marc Quinn presents HistoryNow at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia, in Piazza San Marco - until October 23 - curated by - Aindrea Emeline and Francesca Pini -  marking a new material chapter in his decade-long History Paintings project. Forty-eight new paintings and an accompanying Stele sculpture are presented in dialogue with the museum’s own collection from classical antiquity, inviting reflections on society past and present. Quinn’s works, which begin their life as iPhone screenshots, replicate the digital portals through which humans absorb, consume, and share news, a phenomenon markedly accelerated by the events of the last two years. Through screens, society witnesses world-shifting cultural events, incidents of human tragedy, and natural disasters, alongside moments of pop cultural levity in one endlessly refreshing stream. 

 HistoryNow - #FreeBritney to get if off my heart - Instagram - 2021

 

 

HistoryNow replicates a scrolling journey through digital feeds, the content of which oscillates between celebrity news and global current affairs. Unveiled in a space usually reserved for reflections on the past, connections are uncovered between the series and the museum’s classical sculptures, offering commentary on the method and momentum with which news and stories have been communicated across history. In this exhibition Quinn returns to themes explored throughout his career, posing questions concerning societal ideals and the human condition. 

HistoryNow - Well I don't think science knows actually - Instagram - 2020

HistoryNow - #FridaySept11 - The New York Times - 2020 

 

 

Painted through several government lockdowns in the UK, the preparatory process of each artwork became a meditative act for Quinn; the daily ritual of painting reflected the continuous rhythm of scrolling through the internet. While the method, materials and results of Quinn’s painting process vary, the screenshot as primer remains a constant, evoking the ubiquity and urgency of news and technology in our lives. 

HistoryNow - Beyonce - US Weekly - 2020

HistoryNow - Bonnie and Clyde - St. Louis Public Radio - 2020 

 

HistoryNow - Colin Kaepernick - 2020

 

 

HistoryNow - Dazed 100 - Dazed Digital - 2020

HistoryNow - Liver King - Instagram - 2022

HistoryNow - Trans people belong - The New York Times - 2021

 

HistoryNow - Kim at the Met Ball - 2022

 

Rather than a chronological presentation, the paintings are grouped in thematic conversation with the classical collection exhibited in each room. Quinn explores historic yet timely tropes such as beauty ideals, power, conflict and heroism, among other topics. The final room of the exhibition houses a multimedia experience offering additional context for the painting series, including interviews with individuals connected to the imagery or content of the paintings. Through these paintings and subsequent interviews, Quinn seeks to reflect on these viral and often incomplete stories to bring viewers back to the heart of the subject matter, unpacking our compulsion toward instant consumption and reaction. 

 HistoryNow - Shaman Triptych - BBC News - 2021

 

photograph courtesy Marc Quinn

HistoryNow - The year that changed the Internet - The Atlantic - 2022

 

 

Hung from the ceiling of the museum's corridors, a pathway of paintings floats overhead like an internet "cloud", a data-nebula that completely surrounds us. Quinn evokes in physical space the familiar sensation of endlessly scrolling through automatically updating news and social media feed: that hourly tumble through a rabbit hole of unrelated stories and miscellaneous information.  Integrated into the museum's architecture, the display also evokes the tradition of Italian fresco and Venetian ceiling painting, a mural technique employed since antiquity to depict narrative scenes and mythological, religious, or historical episodes on the ceilings of rooms.

 

HistoryNow - LiveStream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 photograph courtesy Nero Cucine 

 

"The objective of Nero Cucine is definitely to innovate, as an 

engineer, that's where I contribute the most, not only 

from a technological point of view but also from a design point of view, 

 where we brought in for our first collaboration Gabellini Sheppard - and, from a material point of view we want to create something that is durable, therefore

sustainable that uses high quality materials in the best possible way."

Bartolomeo Bellati

CEO and Co-founder Nero Cucine

  

Nero Cucine

NU [037]
Gabellini Sheppard - Viabizzuno 

No this is not a monolithic work of art - with its beautiful graduated – ombre of dark to light stainless-steel exterior - it is a sculptural smart hub - one of the two blocks of the NU [N037] kitchen by Nero Cucine – with production in Italy and headquarters in New York.  The design is the result of a first time collaboration with architects Gabellini Sheppard and lighting designer Viabizzuno.  Nu was launched during the Salone del Mobile in the Pianca & Partner’s Milan showroom. 

 

photograph courtesy Nero Cucine

CEO, Bartolomeo Bellati and Creative Director, Stefano Venier

Co-founders - Nero Cucine 

 

 photograph courtesy Nero Cucine

NU is a sculptural smart hub that combines Nero Cucine’s award-winning - Red Dot Award 2022 - N037 wing top technology, conceived by Stefano Venier with Gabellini Sheppard’s design into an ‘off-the-wall’ performative stage. Defined by two monoliths, one vertical and one horizontal. When the horizontal monolith's countertop is closed the system acts as a sculptural piece, whilst when raised and recessed - it becomes a highly functional action station. The vertical monolith is constructed of stainless steel panels with a unique gradated stainless steel in an ombre of dark to light effect, it is a pull-out station that includes a pantry, wine storage, full fridge, full freezer, convention oven, dishwasher and microwave niche.

 

 

 "...this was something for us very entertaining and daunting, how to take

a general kitchen and how to think about kitchens that are very expansive

and have very large footprints and actually to reverse the challenge to

create something that is quite concentrated and quite focused...  

The way in which it could get engaged in creating this sort of social connector an 

off the wall theater in and around - out of this world kitchen concept."

Michael Gabellini 

Architect - Designer - Gabellini Sheppard

 

"Developing a process where the kitchen should be in the center 

because it becomes a sort of performative stage - so 

you can look at it from different angles, it can become 

a beautiful object, it's a background 

everything changes the way you interact with the kitchen

just because you put it out of the wall."

Sivia Maffei  

Senior Associate - Gabellini Sheppard

 

  

"When the horizontal monolith's countertop is closed the system acts 

as a sculptural piece, whilst when raised and recessed 

it becomes a highly functional action station."

 

The horizontal monolith has a tinted artistic glass enclosure while the action station’s marble top is made of Cipollino Verde marble from Italy. NU incorporates unique materiality with the best of Italian craftsmanship to mold an immersive sensory experience replete with the highest level of innovation and materials.

 

photograph courtesy Nero Cucine 

 

"Nu, designed by Michael Gabellini, integrates the Wing Top N037 mechanism by Nero Cucine. Viabizzuno's lighting was very important for the success of this kitchen, which consists of a sheet of light above the columns and one that illuminates the artistic glass in the front and sides of the island. My passion for the world of engines, cars and motorcycles has certainly influenced 

my way of doing design and it can be perceived 

in the mechanics of these kitchens."

Stefano Venier

Creative Director and co-founder Nero Cucine

 

 

"The vertical monolith is constructed of stainless steel panels with a unique gradated stainless steel in an ombre of dark to light effect, it is a pull-out station for a pantry, wine storage, full fridge, full freezer, convention oven, 

dishwasher and microwave niche."

 

 photograph courtesy Nero Cucine 

Bartolomeo Bellati, Daniele Solari, Silvia Maffei and Stefano Venier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venice - #BiennaleArte 2022 - Gallerie dell'Accademia - AND - Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor

 

"Kapoor creates works that are happening as we experience them. Throughout all of the spaces of this exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin, there is process and temporality on display and in action. These works exist in a continuous state of becoming, we are invited to witness these objects at just one moment in the process of their generation or de-generation."

Taco Dibbits

curator 

Gallerie dell'Accademia + Palazzo Manfrin

Anish Kapoor 

 

Internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor is the first British artist to be honoured with a major two part exhibition - at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin - until October 9 - which is curated by art historian Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  The exhibition, which includes about 60 works, has retrospective elements alongside newer bodies of work, presenting key moments in the artist’s career. Ground-breaking new works, created using carbon nanotechnology, are shown for the first time, as well as recent paintings and sculptures that are testament to the vitality and visionary nature of Kapoor’s current practice. 

 

 

Gallerie dell'Accademia - Anish Kapoor

The Unremembered - 2020 

The Benighted - 2022 - The Benighted III - 2021  

 

 

This interaction of science and art has created works that sit within an age-old language of painting, that alongside installations like Shooting into the Corner  and new paintings enter a complex dialogue with the Gallerie dell’Accademia’s historical collection. Perhaps more explicitly than ever, this exhibition looks to a language of the interior that has always been central to Kapoor's practice. 

 

Gallerie dell'Accademia - Anish Kapoor

Shooting into the Corner - 2008-2009 

photograph - Luca Zanon - Giorgione - La Tempesta - courtesy - Galleria dell'Accademia

"Anish Kapoor has built his whole oeuvre on investigating the absolute essence of art in it's constituent inner elements: form, pigment, perspective, light and its absence,facilitating in this creative investigation a stimulating dialogue with the art of the great Venetian Renaissance masters represented in the museum: Bellini,Titian, Tintoretto,Veronese.” 

Giulio Manieri Elia

Director - Gallerie dell'Accademia 

Giulio Manieri Elia, Anish Kapoor, and Art Historian and curator Taco Dibbits

Giorgione - La Tempesta 

 

Giorgione's La Tempesta was housed in Count Girolamo Manfrin's palazzo's picture gallery in the nineteenth century,  at the time one of Venice's major tourist attractions visited by among others Antonio Canova, Lord Byron, John Ruskin and Edouard Manet. When the works in the collection were sold, after the death of Manfrin, the heritage of the Gallerie dell'Accademia was enriched with twenty-one paintings including masterpieces such as Giorgione’s La Tempesta and La Vecchia and works by Mantegna, Memling, Nicolo di Pietro, Girolamo Savoldo and Moretto.  The 18th-century Palazzo Manfrin, which had been empty for many years, was recently acquired by the Anish Kapoor Foundation.

 

Gallerie dell'Accademia - Anish Kapoor 

Non-Object Black - installation view

 

Perhaps more explicitly than ever, this exhibition looks to a language of the interior that has always been central to Kapoor's practice. In Pregnant White Within Me  the architecture of the gallery is distended, suggesting a re-shaping of the boundaries between body, building and being. Throughout the exhibition Kapoor's works absorb and extend the space within and around them into uncanny realms, transforming the rooms of the Gallerie dell'Accademia into sites for the magical - going beyond the display of objects.

Gallerie dell'Accademia - Anish Kapoor 

Pregnant White Within Me - 2022 

 

Ground-breaking new works, created using carbon nanotechnology, are shown for the first time, The skin of the object as veil between the inner and outer world has always been a potent presence in the artist’s practice, and at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, sculptures made with Vantablack push this dynamic into radical new territory, in forms that both appear and disappear before our eyes. In these works Kapoor proposes that if the motif of the fold in Renaissance painting was a sign of being, in their obliteration of the contour and edge we are offered nothing less than the possibility to go beyond being. More unknown forces emerge through a further series of mysterious black works, some embedded in the wall of the gallery, that further explore darkness as a physical and psychic reality.  Alongside these works Kapoor’s most recent paintings are strongly debuted, setting up a dynamic dialogue with both the Gallerie’s art historical collection, and his own sculptural language.

Gallerie dell'Accademia - Anish Kapoor 

 Mother as a Mountain - Black - 1985 

 

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor 

Turning Water into Mirror, Blood into Sky - 2003

 

The second venue of Anish Kapoor’s dual exhibition begins with the monumental new work Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto, protruding from the ceiling of the entrance hall and created specifically for the partially renovated spaces of Palazzo Manfrin where some of the most famous works in the Gallerie dell’ Accademia’s collection originally hung. This pendulous mass of silicone and paint guides visitors through to an equally challenging set of rooms.

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor

Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto - 2022

 

 

"...in which a monochrome blue digger transports tonnes of 

red earth 

in an epic act of displacement."

 

 Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor
Destierro - 2017

 

"Subtleties of Venetian light are at play in ethereal, geometrical works carved from natural alabaster while the deep, lagoon blue pigment of Kapoor’s early void hemispheres provide moments of meditative respite."

 

 Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor 

 Gate II - 2020

Gate III - 2021

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor
Three - 1990 - detail

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor  

Split in Two Like a Fish For Frying - 2022 

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor   

 Hidden Mirror / Shulamite and Lajja Gauri - 2020

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor  

Installation View Non- Object Black - Kapoor Black

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor  

Vertigo - 2006

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor  

Sky Below 2022 - Painting ƃuᴉʇuᴉɐd  - 2021  - mirror ɹoɹɹᴉɯ -  2017  

 

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor   

The Innocents  - 2020

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor

Portrait of Pink - 2019 - Portrait of Pink II - 2019 - Portrait of Pink III - 2019 

 

Palazzo Manfrin - Anish Kapoor  

Symphony for a Beloved Sun  - 2022

  

 

Palazzo Manfrin  

 

The Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Marsilio with essays by: Gil Andijar; Homi K.Bhabha; Linda Borean; Giuseppe Civitarese; Mario Codognato; Waldemar Januszczak; Norman Rosenthal; Carlo Rovelli and Michele Tavola.