Anselm Kiefer. Palazzo Ducale

On March 26th the exhibition Anselm Kiefer. These writings, when burned, will finally cast a little light (Andrea Emo) was inaugurated at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Curated by Gabriella Belli and Janne Sirén, the exhibition closes the celebrations of the Fondazione Musei Civici for the 1600 years since Venice’s foundation.

In one of the most important spaces of the Palazzo, the Sala dello Scrutinio, Anselm Kiefer exhibits a series of site-specific works in open dialogue with the thirty-three monumental paintings on the ceiling and with the entire decorative cycle of the Doge’s Palace, which includes works by Bellini, Titian and Veronese: Kiefer thus reflects on the role of Venice in history and above all on the nature of contemporary art and of its relationship with contemporaneity.

The exhibition also continues the artist’s reflections on destruction as a necessary part for the creation of new experiences, also inspired by the thought of the Venetian philosopher Andrea Emo: born almost as a result of the fire that burned the entire decoration of the room in 1977, the paintings are in turn destined to disappear when the installation is over, in a metaphor that brings to the surface the dark stratification of millenary myths.

The Tosetto team took care of the entire set-up of the exhibition, with a peculiar planning to place works of considerable size in a delicate context such as Palazzo Ducale: an exciting challenge, which required to devise a path that would highlight the capacity of a place of memory to generate new dialogues and also to be a center of living culture.

Img Courtesy: Andrea Avezzù