CATALYST: Venice - Eat, Art, Love

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Venice - Eat, Art, Love - Part I

This weekend I was swepped away to a mystery destination and I experienced what might as well have been an Elizabeth Gilbert short story.

Venice. Eat, Art, Love. Indulgent, Jaw-dropping, Oozing romance.

Part I

Unlike Gilbert reflecting through prayer, art was my catalyst to reflection. Especially at the "Voice of Images" Palazzo Grassi Exhibition curated by Caroline Bourgeois.

With "Voice of Images", Palazzo Grassi hosts its first exhibition entirely devoted to video as a medium of expression. The 30 works, by 27 artists from the François Pinault collection were selected because according to Martin Bethenod, Director of Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana François Pinault Foundation, they have "a shared method of questioning the present. If all confront social and economic issues at work in today’s world, none of them do so in a literal or unequivocal manner."

Caroline Bourgeois' aim with this exhibition is "to offer visitors a sensory journey that oscillates, through the gaze of the artists, between solemnity, angst, humor, and levity, ... The works presented aren’t merely descriptive: they invite the viewer to share in an artistic experience that goes beyond merely looking and speaking"

Of the works presented I would like to highlight the one that impressed me most."Maybe the sky is really green and we're just colorblind. A Wetube-o-theque" (2012) by the Belgian Johan Grimonprez conveyed how conditioned we are by the endless consumption of images. (Mis)information through editing and repetition of images determines our view of the world and our opinions.

I was literally clustered to the screen for about an hour, watching his humorous and sometimes absurd compilation of videos.

Included here is a selection of videos from his compilation:

John Haller - Classified