(by Roberto Nardi).
The exhibition Proportio at the 56th Venice Biennale is a circular oasis devoid of a before or an after, designed to explore the concept of proportions and sacred geometry across time and art.
Organised by the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation and Venice's Fondazione Musei Civici at Palazzo Fortuny to coincide with the 56th Venice Biennale, it features specially commissioned works alongside masterpieces from past eras, with Anselm Kiefer flanking Albrecht Durer, Anish Kapoor's disks alongside Alberto Giacometti's works, and paintings and ancient books next to Carl Andre's metallic sheets on the ground.
At Museo Correr, American artist Jenny Holzer is showing Political, a series of war paintings with writing based on declassified documents concerning the global war on terrorism after September 11, 2001.
The 61-year-old West Virginia native pulls together notes, maps, statements, recordings of interrogations, autopsy reports and autobiographical writings by detainees that were censored prior to being made public.
At Ca' Corner of the Regina, where Fondazione Prada is housed, Salvatore Settis and Davide Gasparotto are behind Portable Classic, which explores the origins and the functions of miniature reproductions of classical sculptures. Almost facing it on the other side of the Grand Canal, the Ca' d'Oro houses Fabrizio Plessi's anthology on the theme of water, while in the nearby Palazzetto Tito, Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa is showing newly commissioned work by rapidly rising art-star Peter Doig, who made a number of paintings for the occasion, and Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado reigns at the Palazzo San Marco.
A unique exhibition on Mario Merz, one of the founders of the Arte Povera movement, is on view at the Accademia's Nuove Gallerie. On May 8 and 9, visitors will be regaled with an installation commissioned by Shiseido makeup company to Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who created a 16 by 9 meter arc stretching from the ground to the first floor of the Palazzo Pisani music conservatory.
The tensile arc is a carefully engineered grid of over 90,000 makeup cases in the installation filling the music school's large, central courtyard and titled Reverberation - Pavilion of Light and Sound.
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