Curated by Alessandra Santin
Venice, Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo
27th  April – 31th August 2021
open daily 10 A.M. – 6 P.M.

“È per sempre” (literally “It is forever”) is the name of the new exhibition landed at Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, in the exhibitionary spaces belonging to the I.P.A.V (Istituzioni Pubbliche di Assistenza Veneziane) and managed by Fondazione Venezia Servizi alla Persona through the valorisation project “Gioielli Nascosti di Venezia”. The exhibition, curated by Alessandra Santin, hosts the artworks of Mara Fabbro and Alberto Pasqual, striclty in dialogue with the architecture of the spectacular staircase. The exhibition will open the doors to the public as soon as the sanitary emergency improves and it will be visitable until 31th August 2021. The fil rouge of the exhibition relates to the overabundance/excess of plastic materials irresponsibly produced and dispersed in the world by the consumer society, eventually causing its saturation. The “End of the fish” is the first installation welcoming the visitors at the foot of the staircase, whose strong visual effect is suggested by the rainfall of plastic bags reporting the deformed, distressed faces of the artists. The sense of suffocation transmitted to the viewer recalls the asphyxiation of many marine species which live in environments hopelessly damaged by pollution. As never before, fullness and emptiness convey the essence of our times, where the excess and waste of plastic materials contrast with the lack of certainty and values. It is from these themes that the artworks placed in the two halls of the noble floor were born. “Trasparenze” (“Transparencies”) build a bridge between the works of the two artists. On one hand, the “Membrane Metropolitane” (“Metropolitan Membranes”) by Mara Fabbro, transparent PVC panels on which the artist realizes metropolitan maps with “pixels” of matter – obtained with a mixture of sand, resin and glue – by re-elaborating actual geographies. On the other hand, “Presenze-Assenze” (“Presences-Absences”) by Alberto Pasqual, vertical, transparent plastic totemic statues, express the “suspended” condition suffered by the individual in the difficult context of contemporary society. Where for Mara Fabbro water is the key for her research – seas and rivers which define geography -, fire is, instead, the determining element for the materiality of Alberto Pasqual, whose iron-works propose the themes of the laceration and emptying of the individual. The exhibition is completed with the catalogue of critics texts and essays by Alessandra Santin, Giada Centazzo, Lorena Gava e Mariateresa Setaro Chaniac.