The world of the Visual Arts...

Jenny Saville at Ca’ Pesaro (Portraits)...

This post about the exhibition presented by Jenny Saville (UK, 1970) in Venice focuses on her monumental portraits, works that engage the viewer and confront them with a visual presence of great intensity. Possessing an almost defiant quality, these figures can be perceived as deeply visceral and even unsettling, traits that highlight both the artist's remarkable technical skill and her ability to convey intense emotional weight through the subjects' gazes.

The works are unified by a distinctive use of color, particularly the application of brilliant hues over naturalistic skin tones. While the depiction retains certain realistic features, specific areas take on an abstract quality, evoking the American Expressionism of Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning.

Her faces are raw and bold, challenging standards of beauty, yet simultaneously powerful and real.

Gaze, by Jenny Saville (2021–2024)

Technique: oil and acrylic on linen

Focus, by Jenny Saville (2022–2024)

Technique: oil and acrylic on canvas

4:28 p.m.
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Wallace Chan...

Temporary Exhibitions

Vessels of Other Worlds, a new body of monumental titanium sculptures by artist Wallace Chan (China, 1956), renowned for creating a carving technique that produces a three-dimensional illusion within titanium (the "Wallace Cut"), is currently on display at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà in Venice.

In this exhibition, the dialogue between the materials and the space housing these three sculptures, each nearly 10 meters tall, addresses the uncertainty that defines our existence: whether humanity originated on this planet or in other, as-yet-unknown worlds.

According to the exhibition text, the inspiration stemmed from Olea Sancta, the sacred oils used in Catholic rituals to bless the faithful. Accordingly, three screens were positioned at the chapel altar, acting as secret portals to reveal the origins of Chan’s sculptures. The videos focused on the three stages of life (birth, growth, and death), while the forms of the sculptures bore a resemblance to the imagery Hieronymus Bosch created in his extraordinary The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Vessels of Other Worlds, by Wallace Chan (2026)

Vessels of Other World, by Wallace Chan (2026)

Detalle

Vessels of Other World, by Wallace Chan (2026)

Detalle

1:42 p.m.
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Venice Biennial II (Arsenale)

21st Century

Koyo Kouoh, along with her team, managed to decentralize or dismantle the canon that usually emerges from the Biennale, giving space to virtually unknown, almost marginalized artists. Therefore, the open wound, or the debt that Art History owes to the margins, has been closed or healed with this Biennale.

While African artists predominate, the collection also highlights those who work in relation to the land or those who incorporate music into their works, achieving a surprising sense of curatorial harmony, especially in the Arsenale, where monumentality expands into every space.

This exhibition is the ideal seed for curators to find inspiration and open doors to little-known artists, so that the West can recalibrate and focus on other cultures.

The End of the World, by Alfredo Jaar (2023-2024)

We highlight Alfredo Jaar's The End of the World, a red room with blurred contours, like a strange underworld where all the minerals used in technology are visualized and compressed at the far end of the room, inside a glass dome. It is one of the few works that references politics, emphasizing the global tragedies in which these minerals are absolutely essential.

Disease Throwers, by Guadalupe Maravilla

Installation

Cosmological Offerings for a Drowning World, by Thania Petersen

9:59 a.m.
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Venice Biennial 2026 - Part I (Giardini)

Contemporary Art

In October 2024, Koyo Kouoh accepted the Venice Biennale's invitation to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition. By early May 2025, she had already defined the theoretical framework, selected the participants and artworks. The authors of the catalogue, graphic identity, and exhibition architecture had also been determined. Koyo Kouoh intended to present all of this on May 20th, but she passed away unexpectedly ten days earlier, on May 10th, 2025. The Venice Biennale then decided to proceed with the exhibition according to her plans, together with the curatorial team she herself had appointed.

While the 61st Biennale is based on Koyo Kouoh's concepts, it is also a tribute to her, resulting in one of the most poetic exhibitions to date.

Untitled (from The Affirmative Happiness of a Green Dot), by Hala Schoukair (2019)

Technique: acrylic on canvas

Flower, by María Magdalena Campos-Pons (2026)

Material: resin

In Giardini, visitors are invited to connect with the earth and life through a hopeful message of comfort and transcendence. Commentary on world events and current crises is absent; instead, the emphasis is on reconnecting with the natural habitat and the role of art in society: emotion, visuality, and sensory experience. Editors and critics agree that it is diplomatic and healing, and it's true: those of us fortunate enough to experience it firsthand left feeling comforted, as if we had received a hug from a dear friend. What predominates? Flowers as a recurring motif, for example, the giant orchid by María Magdalena Campos-Pons, among others.

(To be continued...)