GROUP SHOW • THE VANISHING DREAM

THE VENICE VENICE HOTEL
PERMANENT EXHIBITION SINCE FEBRUARY 2023

Bigaignon is pleased to announce its collaboration with one of Venice's most en-vogue hotels, the Venice Venice Hotel, a collaboration that takes the form of a curatorial project through which the Parisian gallery and the property have created for this Venetian palace a cutting-edge selection of works by the artists of the gallery.

Facing the Rialto Bridge, on the waters of the Grand Canal, the Venice Venice Hotel lets us rediscover the avant-garde soul of the glorious city of the Doges. Acquired by Francesca Rinaldo and Alessandro Gallo, founders of the Golden Goose fashion label, this 11th-century Byzantine-era palace was also one of the first hotels in Venice, opening as early as the 16th century, where Mozart and Voltaire stayed. This heritage has not deterred the owners in their desire to create a contemporary establishment where architecture, fashion, design and art merge to tell the story of the most influential international avant-garde movements of yesterday and today.

Beside the personal collection of the Gallos built over more than twenty-five years, including works by Cy Twombly, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, the fruits of this special collaboration, which started in a very consistent and organic way between Venetian artist Renato D’Agostin, the Gallos and the gallery, are scattered around in several key places of the hotel. In addition to the works of Renato D’Agostin specifically created for the noble lobby of the Venetian palace, guests will discover with delight rooms 25 and 31 which were curated by the Paris-based light-sensitive contemporary art gallery.

The Veni Etiam Loft (room 25), entirely dedicated to Serenissima-born artist Renato D'Agostin, skillfully blends the spirit of Venice, the atmosphere of a New York-style loft and the studio of this brilliant photographer. As the sun streams in through the magnificent windows overlooking the Rialto, Renato D'Agostin's many photographic prints, which cover much of the suite, remind us that light is at the heart of his practice. The light of the present mingles with the light of captured time, an alchemy that offers a new stylistic dimension to this place steeped in history.

The selection presented in room #31, aka The Vanishing Dream, is indeed halfway between dream and reality. While Hideyuki Ishibashi benefited from a special commission by the Gallos for who he created a bespoke work based on the memory of one of the dreams he had during a stay at the Venice Venice hotel, others such as Ralph Gibson, Catherine Balet, Thierry Urbain, Denis Malartre, Fernando Marante, Harold Feinstein and Máté Dobokay take us into sublimated worlds where chimerical characters and ephemeral landscapes exist side by side, in harmony between past and present, between real memories and fictional reality. This apparent fluidity between dream and reality is also characterized by the particular attention paid by Morvarid K, Jean de Pomereu and Thomas Paquet to their vision of water, that magnificent element that is both uncontrollable by nature and an absolute symbol of the eternal Serenissima.

Echoing the atmosphere of the Parisian gallery in a Venetian setting, the result of this fruitful collaboration is to be discovered as of now, right in time for the Venice Biennale.