VENICE DIARIES PART 1 – Arrival & “Personal Structures/Eternal Love” exhibitions

by Chantal

View from my plane window

Excitement builds as we fly over beautiful Italy heading towards Venice. On arrival I travel to Rialto Bridge from the airport by water bus. Listened to Joanna Newsom on the hour crossing and enjoyed feeling the spray of sea water through the boats high windows.

Approaching Rialto bridge and everything is just stunning! Every bridge we pass under is achingly romantic. Venice is truly magical! Getting off the boat and walking down my first street I can’t stop smiling.

Rialto bridge. View from a room in the Palazzo Bembo

Arriving after 6pm I didn’t expect to see any art exhibitions today but I got lucky as the collateral event Personal Structures was open until 7pm and was right nearby the Rialto bridge in a stunning building called the Palazzo Bembo. The exhibition upstairs present 28 different artists including Marina Abramovic, Carl Andre, and Johannes Giradoni (see here for full list of artists) and is curated by Karlyn De Jongh & Sarah Gold.

For me what was most enjoyable was the solo exhibition on Wolfgang Joop, Eternal Love that was showing simultaneously in the lower part of the palazzo. This was curated by the director of the Ludwig Museum, Dr. Beate Reifenscheid, and presented an arresting combination of sculptures in marble and metal alongside 2D works wall objects in fabrics and paper.

Joop addresses our human existence through a combination of ‘reality’ and ‘dream’, making references to pain and death, but presented in an esthetically beautiful way. Classic art-historical themes are addressed in a new, dream-like and experimental way. Wolfgang Joop is not afraid of emotion; the artist says he loves the “fairy tale-like, even in abstraction.”With this exhibition, Wolfgang Joop aims to highlight the passion and beauty as well as the transience of life and to show the public a possible, positive way of handling these general topics every human being has to deal with.

Wolfgang Joop

Wolfgang Joop

Wolfgang Joop