Igor Mitoraj: Sculture 1983-2005, Venice
The light of Venice and the timeless works of Igor Mitoraj, an important encounter from which an exhibition is born, starting Sept. 24 at the International Gallery of Modern Art at Ca' Pesaro and other venues in the city.
The dialogue between the artist and time, between the classical and the modern, recurring themes in his work, seems to turn toward Venice and unravel in the heart of the city.
The works on display, 25 previously unpublished drawings and 21 sculptures, 16 of them monumental, outline an exhibition whose artistic journey traverses the entire city, from Campo Santo Stefano, to Santa Maria del Giglio, to Marco Polo airport. Each piece on display is a journey back to the archetype, a revelation of the struggle between beauty and time.
Mitoraj's broken or "precipitated" forms are not an iconoclastic work, but the inevitably fragmented and fragmentary tale of what is not there, of how the history of beauty, from Greece onward, is the story of estrangement.
The comparison of Mitoraj's work with Venice seems almost inevitable, and the continuation of the exhibition itinerary in the city (Santa Maria del Giglio, Campo Santo Stefano, San Vidal, Canal Grande and, in Mestre, San Giuliano, the Civic Center and the Airport) arouses the excitement of discovery.
An exhibition, then, in which time and matter meet, conceived by Mitoraj for Venice and to make even more intense the feeling of bewilderment that the decay of what is eternally beautiful gives.
