Venice Biennale, part 2: Giardino
German pavilion: making heimat, Germany, arrival country. Four large openings where made in the German pavilion to signify Germany’s openness towards refugees: the German pavilion will be literally opened for the duration of the Biennale (the Venice monument preservation board having accepted the opening for that duration). The exhibition analyses the condition for making Heimat,...
Venice Architecture Biennale: Reporting from the front. Part 1: Arsenale
Alejanadro Aravena, curator of the 2016 International Architecture Biennale: “REPORTING FROM THE FRONT will be about sharing with a broader audience, the work of people who are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural disasters, housing shortage, migration, informality, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and the participation of communities. And simultaneously it will be about presenting examples where...
Serpentine Gallery, London
Serpentine Pavilion Architect’s Statement For the Serpentine Pavilion 2016, we have attempted to design a structure that embodies multiple aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is free-form yet rigorous; modular yet sculptural; both transparent and opaque; both solid box and blob. We decided to work with one of the most basic...
Portrait Gallery, London
A friend took me to the quintessence of Britishness that is the Portrait gallery. It starts off with just royalties, but then expands to personalities of the political, scientific and art world, so does get more interesting as time goes by. My favourite English writers Jane Austen and Emily Bronte are brilliantly absent, but then...
Francis Towne’s watercolour of Rome @ British museum
Just back from Rome, so that was a perfect match ;-)… Francis Towne painted them in 1780-1781, but many do still look very familiar in the eternal town…
Frescoes in north Italy
After attending art history series with the Ecole du Louvre program, I was very keen on discovering the art pieces that were discussed during lectures. Thanks to the passion shared by lecturers, in particular Stefania Tullio Cataldo, it was a whole new way of rediscovering places we had visited years ago. I find frescoes very...
Ali Smith’s Ferrara
After reading « How to be both », I just had to plan a stop at Ferrara, on Ali Smith’s footpath, if only to visit the Palazzo Schifanoia and see Francesco del Cossa’s frescoes. Unsurprisingly, it was well worth the trip… Palazzo Schifanoia’s frescoes, allegories of months, gods and zodiac signs. The wall by Francesco del Cossa...
Il tre stance, Firenze
This kind of place is simply unique and hard to describe, but suffice to say that we won’t look further when staying in Florence. The property is a palazzo, with immensely high ceilings, meters from the Duomo. The interior has been considerately refurbished, leaving the traces of original stucco and furnished with antique or vintage furniture:...
Siena, Montepulciano and Firenze postcard
Siena, a few days before the Palio, with the funny lamps and the flags to the colours of each neighbourhood, and the rings on the walls waiting for their horses.. Montepulciano Firenze
Francesca’s flat in Venice
Found Francesca’s flat on Airbnb, and staying there was fabulous as not only is it ideally central, but also does it makes you feel like a local for a few days: shopping for groceries at the Rialto market, and being awaken by the gondolieri’s song was as atmospheric as sipping Prosecco on the shaded terrace...
Verona, Trento, Venice, Rome postcard
Verona Trento Venice On St Giorggio, The Glass tea house Mondrian by Hiroshi Sugimoto @ Le stance del vetro, more info here Part of the « Together » exhibition by Jaume Piensa for the 2015 Art Biennale, at San Giorgio Maggiore, luckily left on loan by Jaume Piensa to the monastic community for the...
Reviewing antiquity @ British museum
Trying to pick up the Renaissance trail at it’s sources…. in London (?!?!) From the Acroplis, Athens From the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos From Vaison-la-Romaine The philosophers, Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures Socrates Antisthene, Cynic school Chrysippos, Stoic school Epikouros, Epicurean school Asklepios, healing god