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23 September 2025
Amazement, Reality, Enigma. Pietro and the Painting of 17th Century in Venice at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia
19.09.25 - 18.01.26
By Naima El-Baz | ★ ★ ½
Naima El-Baz (b. 1991) is an art historian based in Rome. El-Baz’s area of scholarship is on the creation of the body during the Rennaisance, with a focus on Leonardo Da Vinci. She is currently a PhD candidate at Sapienza University of Rome.
06 May 2025
Robert Mapplethorpe: Le forme del classico at Le Stanze della Fotografia
10.04.25 - 06.01.26
By Harold Perkins | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
The minute one comes face to face with the curvature of the female body, pure ecstasy looms over them. Robert Mapplethorpe is a master of crafting arousal for the spectator, through his masterfull impressions of the human form. The exhibition “Le forme del classico” at Le Stanze della Fotografia bridges together over 200 works from Mapplethorpe’s canon, ranging from his sexually charged nude photographs to portraits of global figures including Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Susan Sontag, Glenn Close, Yoko Ono, and Richard Gere. The exhibition sheds light on how Mapplethorpe reinterprets classical aesthetics to explore themes such as desire, identity, gender, and sensuality, using a cultured and visionary language.
The focal point of Mapplethorpe’s canon as previously mentioned lies within his meticulously crafted depictions of female bodies, exemplified in the photographs he took of his muse, Lisa Lyon. The reverent candor with which Lyon, a bodybuilder and symbol of androgynous beauty, is portrayed enables us to go into a deep and fascinating process of self-determination. A variety of fantastical creatures from uncharted realms with physical attributes that may send a chill through a person's spine were used in this activity, positinoning Lyon at the centerfold of theatrics to the camera. Lyon entered the photographer's life under these fictitious guises.
Such subversive techniques were sufficient to bring about the considerable identity renewal of a figure with a very ambiguous charge since she refused to conform to the conventions of mainstream depiction. The images of Lisa Lyon's toned figure have the right to evoke pure sexual ecstasy while transcending the bodybuilder's gender. After all, the ideal woman is a man. Mapplethorpe believed that the complex development of the idea of femininity, of which Lyon was portrayed as the leader, should captivate everyone. Mapplethorpe's deep fascination with a being who carried within her multiple dichotomies, such as beauty, femininity, and graceful facial features clashing with a typically masculine muscularity, juxtaposed Lisa Lyon's desire to appear at the pinnacle of her neoclassical form.
In spite of the ongoing statement that Mapplethorpe’s female nudes do not contain a sexual charge within them, such a point can be easily contested. His photographs of luscious curves, plump breasts, and legs the length of highways provide a simultaneous point of arousal for the subject, the photographer, and the spectator. The surge of pleasure one is engulfed in just looking at these images is indescribable, and it would be a disgrace to human nature itself to state otherwise. By sterilizing the raw energy that engulfs the female form, the magic is lost. Beauty lies in arousal, and to contest arousal is to contest art itself.
Harold Perkins (b. 1979) is a critic based in New York City. Perkins’ writing has appeared in Vice, Hyperallergic, The Cut, and I-D among several books including Terry Richardson’s “Kibosh”. He is currently a board member of Rizzoli International Publications.
11 April 2025
Tatiana Trouvé: The Strange Life of Things at Palazzo Grassi
06.04.25 - 04.01.26
By Dr. Liselotte von Berenberg-Gossler | ★ ★ ★ ★
Tatiana Trouvé’s “The Strange Life of Things” at Palazzo Grassi in Venice unfolds gradually, permeating all three floors of the palazzo, infiltrating its atrium, thresholds, and disrupting its tranquility. The show is less about self-promotion and more about listening, transforming the building into an instrument of memory and time. Trouvé operates within a linguistic framework that eschews singularity: sculptures merge into drawings, drawings melt into installations, and each media functions akin to human awareness in a liminal state between wakefulness and slumber. Her approach is firmly interdisciplinary, yet intimate, permeable, and cognizant of the interplay between inner and outer realms.
Chairs, ropes, and building fragments—utilitarian objects associated with habit and bodily proximity—are reimagined as memory devices, embodying the resonance of lived experience rather than the quantification of time. In Trouvé's grasp, space transforms into a psychological construct, memory assumes a spatial dimension, and imagination is afforded the respect of veracity. Interiors extend outward; exteriors appear to retract inside one's consciousness. Reality is never completely separated from memory or imagination. Engaging with “The Strange Life of Things” is more an experience of inhabiting a suspended temporality than mere observation, wherein the human perception of time—its elongation, its accumulation, its abrupt contractions—assumes a tangible manifestation. The palazzo seems transformed, as if it were contemplating with us, offering its floors and stairwells to an exploration that concerns not objects, but our coexistence with them and their subtle existence alongside us.
Trouvé's intervention at Palazzo Grassi manifests as a labyrinth—neither wholly architectural nor totally conceptual, but existing in a state of suspension between the two. One unavoidably recalls Borges, for whom time was not linear but akin to a maze, perpetually bifurcating and folding back upon itself, generating chambers of thought that diverge rather than lead to definitive conclusions. In "The Strange Life of Things," time operates in this manner. The artist creates a tangible labyrinth that reflects an internal one: corridors of perception and chambers that evoke a sense of familiarity prior to being observed. Navigation within the palazzo transforms into a cognitive process, while cognition itself assumes a spatial dimension. The exhibition does not direct but rather entangles, prompting the visitor to forgo orientation in favor of heightened concentration.
A significant section of the work has been designed in direct reaction to Palazzo Grassi—its dimensions, its historical significance, and its ongoing interaction with the fluctuating waters of the Grand Canal adjacent to its structure. Trouvé engages with the building not as a mere neutral entity but as a collaborator, permitting its architecture to dictate the rhythm and rationale for her interventions. However, interspersed among these newly created works are pieces from the previous decade, repositioned, revitalized, and engaged in dialogue with the current context. The outcome is not a retrospective; rather, it is an ecosystem: several temporalities cohabit, with older works relinquishing their original contexts and assuming new identities within this Venetian landscape. Each piece appears cognizant of the others, suggesting that the exhibition functions as a self-regulating ecosystem rather than a sequential presentation.
The atrium, where the interaction commences, presents a threshold-image. Trouvé adorns the marble floor with a newly conceived sculptural intervention that promptly disrupts anticipations. Materials linked to modern urban construction—metal components, industrial remnants—are enveloped in a layer of asphalt, extending across the terrain like a dark map. The piece, entitled Hor-sol (2025), functions simultaneously as a cosmic diagram and as the revealed apparatus of a clock: a gear devoid of hands, time absent of numerals. It is a surface intended for traversal, yet it impedes transparency, enabling us to perceive opacity, density, and heft. Positioned above it, one experiences a suspension between scales - the cosmic and the infrastructural, the immeasurable and the manmade. This initial gesture established the exhibition's central tension: between institutions that attempt to structure time and the human experience that perpetually eludes them. Delicate fractures manifest in the structure, understated yet intentional, as if the edifice were succumbing to the weight of amassed recollections.
During the exhibition, time seems to extend outward, even in opposition to the architectural divisions. Delicate cracks adorn the walls, understated yet intentional, as if the structure were documenting the weight of stored memories. These openings operate as wounds or apertures, indicating that space is also susceptible to the passage of time. Dispersed over this chronological landscape are continuous series like “Notes on Sculpture,” which present a more personal dimension. Each piece is a three-dimensional still life, cast in bronze from serendipitous studio arrangements and designated with a name and a specific date—December 20th, “Charles” (2025); April 27th, “Maresa” (2021); January 28th, “Marcello” (2025). These sculptures capture ephemeral thoughts, bestowing permanence onto what was previously casual and transient. Similarly distributed throughout the palazzo, “The Guardians” manifests subtly rather than striving for prominence: charts or benches accompanied by personal artifacts such as a bag, a cape, a remnant of existence imply figures that are protective yet absent, vigilant yet reclusive, integrated within the cadence of the exhibition itself.
Thus, “The Strange Life of Things” defies resolution. It provides no conclusive image, no definitive synthesis, but a succession of interactions that stay dynamic. Time, in this context, is neither linear nor static, but rather scattered and embedded in materials, movements, and voids. The exhibition concludes in a practical sense; theoretically, it persists, prompting us to reevaluate not the nature of the artifacts, but the duration of their waiting and the memories they may retain.
Dr. Liselotte von Berenberg-Gossler (b. 1962) is an art critic and historian based in Berlin. Berenberg-Gossler’s writing has appeared in Artforum, The Art Newspaper, The Guardian, and Frieze. She is currently the chair for for Art and New Media at The Humboldt University of Berlin.