#BiennaleArte2026 - Palazzo Franchetti - Eva and Franco Mattes - Rage Bait

 Palazzo Franchetti 

Eva and Franco Mattes - Rage Bait

At Palazzo Franchetti - Autotelic Foundation presents - Rage Bait - Until June 30 - curated - Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein - an exhibition by the Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes.  The exhibition title is derived from the internet slang term ‘rage bait’: content engineered to provoke a visceral emotional response before reason can intervene. Spanning installation, video, and generative AI, the show explores how rage bait is the logical — often inevitable — endpoint of platforms optimised for user engagement.

The artists subject a suite of 16th century rooms in the palazzo to architectural banalisation. A scenography of prefabricated components including raised flooring cages and cable trays - most commonly fitted in datacentres and crypto mining facilities - support two new bodies of work - Cursed cat (in the Dataset -2025) and Are You Still There? - 2025.

Eva and Franco Mattes are among today's foremost artists of networked culture. This exhibition continues their recent investigation into the gap between online culture's polished surface and its murky ethical depths.

Eva and Franco Mattes

Cursed Cat (in the Dataset) - 2025, involves a computer running a Large Language Model train exclusively on images of a single sculpture: a black, earless, stuffed cat, its expression frozen somewhere between triumph and rage - a physical incarnation of the well-known internet meme 'Cursed Cat', where it poses for a moving camera mounted on a robotic arm, that also captures the background. The ever-evolving AI model is a generative system that constantly spews out novel iterations of 'Cursed Cat' distributing them on the internet where they are absorbed into future AI training datasets. The artist intend "to corrupt or alter the imagination of AI" so that the 'Cursed Cat' becomes a ghost in the machine - liable to appear periodically no matter what user's prompt maybe.

Also exhibited other AI-generated 'cursed cats' are made physical in a series of sculptures: using material such as wood-carved from the Dolomites, glass forged in Murano - above - and plastic food replica from Japan.

Are You Still There? - 2025 - a series of AI-generated videos in which 'Italian Brainrot' characters restage real conversations from a suicide prevention hotline.

Rage Bait arrives at a moment when provocation is no longer fringe but is instead native to digital infrastructures. Under these conditions, the strange is the new normal — a feedback loop in which platforms, users, and algorithms train one another into ever more reactive configurations.

Le Cabanon

Rage Bait 

The second venue presenting Rage Bait was in a private swimming pool located next to Palladio's Redentore church on the Giudecca where Eva and Franco Mattes staged a monumental site-specific video installation titled - But I Love Human - 2025 . There the pool water rippled with the reflection of moving images generated by a massive LED screen suspended over the water.  The work staging created a contemporary reflection akin to that of the Greek myth Narcissus, who vainly fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. 

Pin It

#BiennaleArte2026 - Ama Venezia - Aura

AMA Venezia

Aura

The exhibition - Aura - until November 22 - brings works and presences into relation, where art emerges through intensity, perception, and shared experience. Drawn entirely from the AMA Collection, the exhibition explores the tensions between material and immaterial, the seen and the sensed.

Richard Serra - Sign Board Prop - 1969

A significant work by Ed Ruscha, created for AMA Venezia, forms a bridge between Venice, U.S.A. and Venezia, Italy, while a live work by Tino Sehgal foregrounds movement, presence, and direct encounter. Alongside works by Arthur Jafa, Charles Ray, Christopher Wool, Richard Serra, Laura Owens, Jenny Saville, and others, these works engage the architectural and perceptual conditions of the space in distinct ways.

Ed Ruscha - Venezia, Venice - 2026

Brandon Morris - Ghost Dress 12 - 2025

Christopher Wool - Untitled

Charles Ray - Everybody Takes Their Pants Off At least Once A Day - 2024

Aura invites visitors to slow down and look closely, allowing vision to become a physical, emotional, and mental experience.

Sang Woo Kim - Clarity 001 - 2020

Arthur Jafa - Townshend - 2025

Elisabeth Peyton - Larry - 2010

 AMA Venezia - Aura

Fondamenta de Ca' Vendramin 2395 - Venezia

Wednesday-Sunday

 

Pin It

#BiennaleArte2026 - Palazzo Cesari Marchesi - The Pool NYC - The Glass Aquarium - Party Photos

 Palazzo Cesari Marchesi - The Pool NYC

The Glass Aquarium - within - Marriage of the Sea - Il Ratto di Venezia

Party Photos

At Palazzo Cesari Marchesi - The Pool NYC - presented - during preview week of the Venice Biennale - The Glass Aquarium - until November 22 - an exhibition dedicated to the great masters of glass: Lino Tagliapietra - Tristano di Robilant - Maria Grazia Rosin - Dale Chihuly -  they are presented within the - Marriage of the Sea - Il Ratto di Venezia - a site-specific installation by Austin Young at Palazzo Cesari Marchesi which was originally conceived for Venice in 2024 and continues to transform the piano nobile of the palazzo into an immersive environment, forming the spatial and conceptual framework within which the exhibition is presented.

The Pool NYC - and - Artists

Austin Young - Maria Grazia Rosin - The Pool NYC's Luigi Franchin and 

Viola Romoli - Tristiano di Robilant 

The exhibition is set to be a celebration of artists working in glass. Tagliapietra and Chihuly, have worked together, creating unprecedented forms and techniques born from the genius of both minds. Tagliapietra, an undisputed master, blows glass into masterpieces without sketches or plans, guided purely by breath and mind. Two world-renowned masters, they continue to inspire younger generations.  From the next generation in the global glass scene, Maria Grazia Rosin and Tristano di Robilant are essential presences.

 Austin Young - Marriage of the Sea - Il Ratto di Venezia

Austin Young

Robert and Andrew Olliver-Jones

Isabella, Claudio and Ilaria Ciani Bassetti

Camilla Purdon and Erik Hannikainen

Tristano di Robilant creates harmonious, enigmatic sculptures suspended between solidity and weightlessness—light, transparent forms that embody his poetic vision. His process begins with a spontaneous drawing, an immediate gesture transformed into three-dimensional form in the furnace. Through siliceous shapes inspired by poetry and literature, Tristano, together with Maestro Zilio, turns ideas into drawings and brings them to life in a single breath.

Dale Chihuly, participates with - Seaforms - works inspired by marine forms, light and transparency—spirals of color that reveal layered, rhythmic, and flowing structures.

Dale Chihuly - Seaforms

Maria Novella and Aurora Papafava dei Carraresi 

Andrea di Robilant

Beppi, Dodo and Gigi Franchin

Bartolomeo Bellati

Giovanna Carrer and Olga Spanio di Spilimbergo

Maria Grazia Rosin, a master of rock-like, pulsating, mirrored forms inspired by octopuses, cuttlefish, and deep-sea creatures, remains deeply attentive to the environment that hosts her work, placing it with grace and sensitivity in complete harmony with the palace.

Lorenzo and Valentina Marangoni

Ilaria Ciani Bassetti

Dale Chihuly - Seaforms

Bikem de Montebello and friends

Lino Tagliapietra, based in Murano, participates with a work that is a hymn to color: shifting brushstrokes of yellow, like the moment you enter underwater and the marine world welcomes you with a light that seems switched on.

Olivier Lexa - Vase - Lino Tagliapietra

 

Pin It

Palazzo Diedo - Breuggreun Arts & Culture - Ceal Floyer - Unfinished

"....renowned for her concise humour and profoundly understated visual language. Her works are brilliantly inventive, 

full of razor-sharp intelligence, dry wit, and visual acuity.

 Palazzo Diedo - Breuggreun Arts & Culture 

Ceal Floyer - Unfinished

At Palazzo Diedo - Berggruen Arts & Culture - an exhibition of works by the late acclaimed British artist Ceal Floyer - Unfinished - until November 22 - curated by - Ann Gallagher and Jonathan Watkins. Comprising of video, photography, sound, readymades and sculptural pieces, Floyer’s work often employs humour derived from shifting points of view, puns, double-takes and an idiosyncratic reordering of everyday phenomena. It conveys simultaneously the vital possibility of creativity in any situation and a hint of absurdity. 

Half Empty / Half Full - 1999
 two identical photographs - always exhibited together - yet never seen together -  of a glass half-filled with water - refers to the expression that defines 

optimism and pessimism.  

photograph - Hugo Glendinning - courtesy - Breuggreun Arts & Culture 

Ceal Floyer -1968-2025- spent parts of her childhood in Sydney and Rabat before settling in England. She studied at Goldsmiths College - London gaining early recognition during the rise of the - YBAs - Young British Artists.  She was included in 1995 in the General Release exhibition in the Great Britain Pavilion - at the  Venice Biennale, where she presented - Unfinished - 1995 - a looped video of someone twiddling their thumbs. The current exhibition takes its title from this work, bringing the work back to Venice after more than thirty years.

Ceal Floyer 

"It's kind of typical of Ceal. There is something very cold about it,

very conceptual and radical.

And there's also something very funny and warm."

Thomas Demand 

who helped Ceal realise the piece

644 - is the final work Ceal Floyer realised before her death. It is a colour photograph, depicting sheep grazing in a hilly landscape. A number from 1 to 644, in a simple font, is superimposed on each, reminding us of the counting we were encouraged to do as children slipping into sleep.

644 - 2025

A spotlight is placed face-down on a desk, restricting the light around the edges of the lamp.

Available Light - Table - 1998

Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper - Photo © Tony Prikryl - © Ceal Floyer / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026 

A common black bucket is placed on the floor. The MP3 player and loudspeaker placed inside it are readily apparent, as the white cable leading to an electric socket.  The MP3 player plays repetitive sound suggestive of dripping water.

Bucket - 1999

The artist is perhaps most famous for her Monochrome Till Receipt - White - 1998. This work, listing white items bought from a supermarket, conflates everyday experience in the real world with the idea of modernist abstraction taken to its extreme. The document of the exclusively white products purchased locally shortly before presentation of the work, exists in 10 unique country-specific versions.

Monochrome Till Receipt - White - Italian Version - 1998

Mario Codognato

Director - Berggruen Arts & Culture

 

Pin It

#BiennaleArte2026 - Chiesa dell'Abbazia della Misericordia - Etnia House of Arts - Opening Party Photos

photograph courtesy - Etnia House of Arts

"The rebirth of the Chiesa della Misericordia as a space

for the production of the gaze."

Chiesa dell'Abbazia della Misericordia  

Etnia House of Arts - Opening Party Photos

Etnia House of Arts opened with a party after complex restoration in the Chiesa dell'Abbazia della Misericordia during - preview week - of the - Venice Biennale - with a program of artist residencies, art and culture events.  Etnia Eyewear Culture creates a platform for contemporary creation through residencies, interventions, artistic practices, and public events.

"Over the years we have worked extensively with artists, to the point of feeling the need to create a space where this dialogue could become continuous rather than episodic. The Misericordia seemed to us the right place to do so: an almost kaleidoscopic treasure box where we could activate something that was already present. Etnia House of Arts was born from this idea: to build a context in which vision is not only represented but staged, activating unexpected relationships". 

David Pellicer 

CEO and Owner Etnia Barcelona

 Maria Luisa Frisa, David Pellicer and Mario Lupano

Ricardo Alvarez 

Casita Bizcocho

photograph courtesy - Etnia House of Arts

Set in the former Chiesa dell’Abbazia della Misericordia in the Cannaregio district, recently restored and reimagined, the project transforms a layered historic site into a space for artistic production, encounter, and experimentation.  Dating back to the 10th century onwards the Misericordia carries traces of different periods and functions.  It is precisely this nature that makes it an ideal setting today for a new contemporary project. Within this context, Etnia House of Arts takes shape: an active platform dedicated to the creativity of our time, interdisciplinary dialogue, and the building of a temporary community of practices and visions. 

The architectural intervention at the Chiesa della Misericordia by Piero Vespignani and Alessia Semenzato of Studio Anfibio preserves and enhances the building’s historical layers, turning a conservative approach into an active dialogue between heritage and contemporary use. Research revealed a more complex history than expected, uncovering significant elements—from the 14th-century wooden roof to decorative traces and a rare Gothic window—highlighting a structure in continuous transformation. The project embraces and connects these layers, including the 19th-century additions, as part of its identity.

Studio Anfibio - Alessia Semenzato and Piero Vespignani 

photograph courtesy - Etnia House of Arts

Promoted by Etnia Eyewear Culture — the broader expression of Etnia Barcelona’s cultural research — the project not only reactivates a historic space but redefines it: the Chiesa della Misericordia becomes Etnia House of Arts, a living environment where art is exhibited, produced, and made visible in its making. The program unfolds as an open, continuous device of exhibitions, site-specific interventions, performances, and talks—both independent and collaborative—shaping a space where the temporality of artistic work overlaps with public experience. Bartolomeo Bellati -  Canova  - president - below - provided the custom millwork for the renovation including the totem displays units - above - which add elegance and simplicity to the artworks on display.

Michael Gabellini and Bartolomeo Bellati

A central element of the project is the international residency program, in which artists are invited to work starting from a deliberately unconventional element — eyewear — understood not as a functional object, but as a surface of translation, a minimal support through which to question the relationship between vision, identity, and representation. The first two participating artists are Conxi Sane - above -  and Greta Pllana, who, through different languages and sensibilities, develop interventions capable of expanding the perceptual and symbolic possibilities of the object. 

Conxi Sane

Adriana Kanal 

Inside

Renata Campisani, Alessio Vannetti and Sara Sozzani Maino

Helmut Pizzinini

Federica and Matteo Minetto and Romina Bellati

Krassimir Kolev

The Fence

Alessio Vannetti  and Andrea Tarella

Sara Sozzani Maino and Bartolomeo Bellati

Ellis Cooper and Chiara Gabellini

Chiesa dell'Abbazia della Misericordia  

 

Pin It