Even before you enter, you can see immediately that typewriters and calculators have given way to sculptures in the shop windows under the arcades of the Procuratie Vecchie in St. Mark’s Square.
On the occasion of the 59th Venice Art Biennale, in the Olivetti shop and in a small transparent casket designed by Carlo Scarpa between 1957 and 1958 and which Assicurazioni Generali has loaned to FAI (the National Trust for Italy), an exhibition curated by Luca Massimo Barbero unites the artistic paths of Lucio Fontana and Antony Gormley.
There are multiple themes, all referring to space – the body, the sign, time and absence – told through sculpture and drawings and masterfully conserved by architecture.
When you enter, light filters through the shop windows and is reflected by the materials present, the floor covered in glass tiles whose different colours define the zones of the shop; red marks the entrance.
The body presented as an expanded, elastic membrane in space is present in different forms. Viani’s Nude in the Sun, a gilded bronze sculpture on a black marble base from Belgium, installed by Scarpa, is in dialogue with Gormley’s imposing sleeping figure, Rice. This is the largest work in the exhibition and dates from 1984: a reclining body, a plaster cast protected by lead coating and marked with orthogonal welds. The British artist’s whole research is based on the relationship between the body and space “trying to fold architectural space into the body or the body into architecture,” explains Gormley.
Further on, in displays designed by Scarpa, you can see Fontana’s wonderful plaster nudes from 1926 – delicate works that break the orthogonality of architecture.
But it is not only the body, rather a succession of spaces, architectural spaces enriched with details, different textures, and use of materials: marble, stone, marmorino plaster, lime plaster and mosaic, different types of wood, metals and crystals. And then there is the staircase with its steps of Aurisina stone, designed as suspended planes, becoming sculpture and invading the space.
On the upper floor, the mezzanine is lit by a circular window overlooking the square. Light filtered through a sliding teak screen disappears into the thickness of the wall, illuminating a space dedicated to drawings. The British sculptor’s Workbooks are pages of “hasty jottings of thoughts, ideas and feelings or attempts to understand the world” in the form of diagrams, grids and reliefs. In contrast, Lucio Fontana’s drawings are poetic: Notes for the 1951 Technical Manifesto of Spatialism and the 1948 Study for a Spatial Exhibition. These are drawings through which the sculptor expresses his desire to enrich space, going beyond the three principles of Vitruvius.
The gallery offers the viewer a sequence of spaces, leading to more intimate spaces at the back housing Abstract Sculpture of 1934, where Fontana outlines space with wire to alter its trajectory, anticipating Ambiente spaziale presented at the Milan Triennale in 1951.
Full Bowl by Gormley is a 1977 sculpture that attempts to fill the void through a series of concentric bowls, almost like waves on a liquid surface.
Finally you retrace the space by going down the stairs. According to the Spatialist sculptor, this space is an expansion of art experienced as a phenomenon, a necessary element for achieving an eternal dimension through gesture.
Lucio Fontana / Antony Gormley, Negozio Olivetti, Venice (59th Venice Art Biennale), until November 27, 2022
images: (All) Lucio Fontana / Antony Gormley, Negozio Olivetti, installation view, photo © Ela Bialkowska – OKNOstudio
