It will be there new exhibition Michael Armitage. The Promise of Change, open at Palazzo Grassi until January 10th of next year, at the centre of a Art Conversation that Pinault Collection presents with award-winning writer Salman Rushdie, artist Michael Armitage, and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. The meeting (free with mandatory reservation on www.palazzograssi.it) will be held on Thursday, May 21st at 18 pm at the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi. It is based on the themes of the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue, which includes among the critical contributions an unpublished text by Salman Rushdie himself. It will be a dialogue between images, literature and contemporary artistic practices which will bring together different cultural and intellectual perspectives, opening a reflection on memory, social transformation, and the role of art in the present.
Michael Armitage. The Promise of Change
All themes that are at the centre of the important exhibition project Michael Armitage. The Promise of Change that the Pinault Collection dedicates to Michael Armitage, one of the most singular and recognized voices in contemporary painting. Oscillating between figuration and abstraction, documentary narrative and dreamlike visions, Armitage's works intertwine personal memories, cultural references, and symbolic imagery. Their paintings speak to identity, memory, spirituality, and the sociopolitical tensions of today's world. Over 150 works on display between historical works and new productions in which theKenyan-British artist Michael Armitage tackles violent and difficult themes. With the idea that art cannot ignore reality but must instead master it.
In his works, Michael Armitage speaks of wars, corruption, instability in equatorial regions, the migration crisis, the weight of other people's gaze, and abuses of power. At the centre is East Africa and Kenya in particular, which the artist explores with a critical and satirical sensibility. Talking about migration, he draws inspiration from film scenes, novel characters, and pictorial compositions by other artists. Michael Armitage's works are painted in oil on a fabric made from tree bark according to Ugandan and Indonesian traditionsThe natural irregularities of this material directly influence his visual compositions, which are often very elaborate.
Amar Kanwar. Co-travellers
Also at Palazzo Grassi, two important installations by Amar Kanwar (until January 10, 2027, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais) propose a poetic and philosophical approach to individual, social, and political issues. Between art, documentation and activism, the exhibition offers a reflection on our time present, "a moment in history where every truth seems to have a brutal opposite truth”, explains Kanwar. His installation The Torn First Pages (2004-2008), presented in the second-floor rooms of Palazzo Grassi, documents the complexity of the struggle for democracy in Burma. The work exemplifies Kanwar's practice of collecting, synthesizing, and repurposing archival documents.
Lorna Simpson. Third Person
Circa fifty works – paintings, collages, sculptures, installations and a film – Coming from private collections, international institutions and the artist's studio, as well as unpublished works created specifically for this exhibition, they form the core of the exhibition. Lorna Simpson. Third Person, until the next November 22 at Punta della Dogana, the second exhibition space of the Pinault Collection in Venice. Curated by Emma Lavigne and produced in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Lorna Simpson's solo exhibition offers, for the first time in Europe, a large exhibition dedicated to over a decade of his pictorial practice.
In a significant dialogue with the spaces of Punta della Dogana, the exhibition unfolds through three sections: enigmatic figures, arctic panoramas, a gallery of portraits, and majestic female figures, presented in particular in Tadao Ando's Cube. Additionally, an installation bringing together forty collages demonstrates the importance of collage in Simpson's creative process.
Paulo Nazareth. Algebra
On the second floor of Punta della Dogana the personal exhibition until November 22nd Paulo Nazareth. Algebra (curated by Fernanda Brenner). A major exhibition project born from the extensive presence of Nazareth's works in the Pinault Collection and which includes a core of previously unseen works, bringing together over twenty years of artistic practice and transforming the exhibition space of the former customs house.
Photographs, texts and Havaianas worn trace moments in which identities and boundaries collide: a thick line of salt crosses each room, marking a threshold between what is visible and what remains submerged.
