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Pearls of Venice: Icônes at Pinault Collection

Figuratively speaking, an icon means something or someone distinct or that symbolises a specific era, culture or area of knowledge. But who sets the tone in our time, the era of social media and its weak idols, whose virtual lives are as long as a whisper? How to identify the icons of our modernity, far more than liquid, among billions of daily images cluttered on the internet?

Coinciding with the Venice Architecture Biennale, the exhibition Icônes, curated by Emma Lavigne, CEO of the Pinault Collection, and Bruno Racine, director of Palazzo Grassi in Punta della Dogana – headquarters of the Pinault Collection – attempts to answer these questions by showing works from the history of global contemporary art.

Although it is very difficult to fit icons into specific groups or currents, this exhibition, which includes more than eighty pieces, is like a curious, elegant and rarefied constellation of masterpieces that surpass styles and eras.

Icônes begins with the Spazialismo movement, represented by Lucio Fontana and his Concetto Spaziale (1958), alongside Lygia Pape’s beautiful Ttéia 1 (2003). We see time passing by in the date-pictures of On Kawara and, as we enter the temple dedicated to the numerical sequences of Roman Opalka, we notice the power of the thought of infinity: the artist has painted his entire life since 1965, numbers arising in all gradients of blue, grey and white.

With small sculptures built with coloured candles, Chen Zhen establishes a bridge between the idea of traditional architecture and religion; these fragile constructions represent typical Chinese houses and were created in the 1990s, recalling the universal tradition of burning candles to honour the gods. Finally, we reach Robert Ryman’s abstract white-on-white experiments: the American artist has used many media and means throughout his career to overcome the limits of painting and conceptual art.

Examples of works in dialogue with the “iconic” theme of the exhibition are numerous. But there is at least one point we must mention: the special location where this exhibition takes place. In her text, curator Bice Curiger describes Venice as the most iconic of all European cities; a source of dreams, its present remains oblivious to the hardships that affect most of the world’s metropolises. Venice is still a global icon, whose image is replicated in every corner of the world to mimic some of its magic.

There is nothing better than strolling from icon to icon, maintaining the silence we usually observe on special occasions, before sacred things.

The Russian philosopher and priest Pavel Florenskji wrote that icons have the presumed presence of God: they stand beside him as a guide to reach him.

And here the icons of the Pinault Foundation, even if they are profane in the highest sense, help us to find that transcendental sacredness that we feel before works that go beyond history, transforming them into (almost) venerable images.

Beyond fashion and far from the passing of time, walking through the halls of Punta della Dogana – between the shrouds of Dahn Vo (Christmas-Rome, 2012-13) and the meteorite-hit Pope by Maurizio Cattelan (La nona ora, 1999) is almost completing a pilgrimage of faith, beholding the world as a kaleidoscope where icon-images of flesh and spirit, of tradition and avant-garde, nature and human culture, rise to a towering height. And an indeterminate one.

The exhibition Icônes, is on show at Punta della Dogana until 26 November.

Matteo Bergamini is a journalist and art critic. He’s the Director of the Italian magazine exibart.com and also a collaborator in the weekly journal D La Repubblica. Besides journalist he’s also the editor and curator of several books, such as Un Musée après, by the photographer Luca Gilli, Vanilla Edizioni, 2018; Francesca Alinovi (with Veronica Santi), by Postmedia books, 2019; Prisa Mata. Diario Marocchino, by Sartoria Editoriale, 2020. The lattest published book is L'involuzione del pensiero libero, 2021, also by Postmedia books. He’s the curator of the exhibitions Marcella Vanzo. To wake up the living, to wake up the dead, at Berengo Foundation, Venezia, 2019; Luca Gilli, Di-stanze, Museo Diocesano, Milan, 2018; Aldo Runfola, Galeria Michela Rizzo, Venezia, 2018, and the co-curator of the first, 2019 edition of BienNoLo, the peripheries biennial, in Milan. He’s a professor assistant in several Fine Arts Academies and specialized courses. Lives and works in Milan, Italy.

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