36 artists in dialogue with Tadao Ando’s architecture at Punta della Dogana

In Venice, Punta della Dogana shows its environmental nature. Ten years after its opening, the seventh exhibition at Tadao Ando’s creature is titled “Luogo e Segni” (place and signs, ed.). The Pinault Collection was awarded the tender in 2007, and entrusted the restoration of the imposing complex to the Japanese architect. In June 2009, after 14 months of work, Punta della Dogana reopened to the public. Site of a customs house in the seventeenth century, converted into a museum at the beginning of the twenty-first, this building carries a dual temporality. And it is constantly moving.

Natural and meteorological phenomena are omnipresent. Surrounded by water and located at the point of confluence of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, the building is constantly changing in relation to the time of day, the light, the sky, the sea, the wind, the rain, and the seasons. Thus, “Luogo e Segni” opens up narrative spaces, creating new possibilities of experiencing the building by turning memory into an object and the object into memory. It also traces relationships between artists, based on the poetry of Etel Adnan and other writers. Named after an artwork by Carol Rama displayed in the exhibition, the parcours presents changes and metamorphoses, emphasizing the energies that emanate from this setting. Just think of how Wu Tsang’s long flag set in the Torrino responds to the figure of Fortune, floating in the wind and intensifying its iridescent colours in the day light. Light, a symbol of grace, spreads everywhere, here and there, evoking worlds of dream. As in Ann Veronica Janssens’s piece, composed of glitter dust scattered on the ground: this work questions light and its materiality. A bodiless body, at once uncertain and defined depends on the direction of light, on float, and movement on the ground. It thus acts physically on the viewer, stirring sensations and new emotions. Then there is Roni Horn’s installation Well and Truly, which offers us “the peace and quiet to imagine” a new azure. Located in the “Cube” of the Punta della Dogana, this work is imagined as the beating heart of the exhibition.

“Luogo e Segni” is an itinerary through some inner geography where nature, creation and poetry intertwine, and draws particular inspiration from the writings of the poet and artist Etel Adnan, with whom many artists on display share a very strong connection. Echoing Adnan’s poetry, the exhibition evokes the seemingly elusive character of natural elements, staging the various atmospheric changes and the environmental transformations that pervade Punta della Dogana: the azure of the sky and the obscurity of the night, the wind and the sea, the sounds and the scents. The exhibition encompasses the reflection of Venice’s sky in Roni Horn’s glass blocks and in Nina Canell’s mirrors of water, of the glints of light from the Giudecca Canal reflected in Ann Veronica Janssens’s glitter—or in the paintings of Rudolf Stingel and Édith Dekyndt. In some cases, though, it is on the contrary a paradoxical relationship, one that potentially clashes with the setting, as in the case of the works of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster or Philippe Parreno, which mask the view that one ought to have onto the Grand Canal or the Giudecca Canal and replace the landscape of the city – the panorama – with inner landscapes.

Moreover, the ten years celebration of Punta della Dogana enhances the question of the memory of the place, grafting very slightly each single artwork, through the evocation of numerous exhibitions that have been staged over the years. From “Mapping the Studio” (Felix Gonzalez-Torres) to “Accrochage” (Nina Canell, Cerith Wyn Evans), “Elogio del dubbio” (Roni Horn) and “Slip of the Tongue” (Lee Lozano). It is what defines in particular the very first room. Like an overture in music, this sets out all the themes and atmospheres that are running all the way through the exhibition. The memory of the exchanges between Roni Horn and Felix Gonzalez-Torres introduces one of the principal leitmotivs of “Luogo e Segni”: that of the relations of friendship, love, inspiration, admiration and dialogue (whether real or simply dreamed of) between artists. Tributes, citations (taken to the point of repetition by Sturtevant), one artist’s view of another’s work (Liz Deschenes and Berenice Abbott), an invitation from one artist to another (Philippe Parreno and Etel Adnan), and works of collaboration (like those of Julie Mehretu and Tacita Dean, Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros and Stéphanie Saadé).

Extremely sensitive to its own reading layers, the exhibition could represent an hybrid between writing and painting. “Luogo e Segni” consists of a set of sequences that respond to each other and fertilize each other by free association — consider the connections and correspondences that take shape between the artists, as well as between the first diurnal rooms and the last nocturnal dimension. ù There are also many collaborative works such as the leporelli (The Breathing Line) of Anri Sala and Benjamin Ari Meyers, as well as the works conceived jointly by Julie Mehretu and Tacita Dean, or Artists’ Breaths (a tribute to Piero Manzoni) the balloon in which Charbel-joseph H. Boutros and Stéphanie Saadé have mixed their exhalations.

Over the course of the exhibition, this new air, that of the couple, will gradually,merge discreetly and subtly into the atmosphere of the Punta della Dogana. Unexpected and moving, all these collaborations produce intimate spaces. Inviting visitors to enter simple and evident spaces of dialogue, where they all are able to create joint works of art.