The first exhibition narrated by Riccardo Caldura, curator of the exhibition and director of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts
Echoing a powerful metaphor by Kounellis related to his artistic vision — “I believe my greatest ambition (to use a paradox) is to become a needle to sew everything together” — the task set for the reopening of the former church of Sant’Agnese was also to hold together the various components of the site’s history and to envision its future tied to contemporary arts. Four large works from the 17th and 18th centuries, once part of the church’s furnishings, three of which are linked to episodes from the life of the very young Christian martyr to whom the building was dedicated, have been relocated in the main space.
Temporarily exhibited for the reopening are two large works by Jannis Kounellis from his series of “armadi” (wardrobes), which were featured in significant numbers in one of the artist’s last exhibitions conceived and realized in 2016. These two works by Kounellis engage in dialogue with an important piece by the same artist acquired by the Alberto Peruzzo Foundation; this work serves as the exhibition’s focal point, being placed in the area of the former apse to mark the transition between the two spaces that now make up the area finally returned to public use.
The work is dramatic, composed of a wooden beam nearly four meters long, suspended vertically on a double steel plate resting on coals, and a jute sack whose weight presses down on a footrest. The beam is pierced by a long knife. The whole composition evokes a theme closely connected to Kounellis’s poetics: that of martyrdom. It creates a relationship with the hagiography of the teenage martyr, whose throat was cut with a sword blow, similarly to the way lambs were sacrificed, and with the tragic story of Saint Eurosia, depicted in a painting by Giandomenico Tiepolo that is not related to the history of Saint Agnes.
In the second space, a selection of notable contemporary works from the Alberto Peruzzo collection is exhibited, some of which belong to the era of Informal Art, marked by experimentation with new materials and new perspectives beyond two-dimensionality. Other artists, whose works are relatively more recent and not tied to that period, engage with the theme of rituality and the human figure suspended between mournful questioning and enigmatic presence, generating further layers of connection with the works displayed in the main room.