This year’s season of art at the Palazzo Cini Gallery begins with Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins, an exhibition of works by the celebrated contemporary artist and photographer Vik Muniz, curated by the Institute of Art
History director, Luca Massimo Barbero.
Staged in collaboration with Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, the exhibition features photographs and a glass sculpture produced by the artist in a process involving the re-elaboration in a personal key of familiar works in the collective imagination. In this case he has been inspired by paintings in the great Venice lagoon tradition, and he has reinterpreted works actually shown at San Vio during the 2016 exhibition entitled Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection, as well as some works permanently on show in the historic collection. He will thus also forge a link between the first and the second floors in the gallery. Muniz simulates the brushstrokes of the celebrated paintings by using cuttings of illustrations reproduced in art books. He carefully selects not only the colour values but also the images: glued together they produce the tactile, physical effect of an impastoed surface. In the wake of the tradition of the 17th- and 18th-century artists, Muniz ingeniously recombines various elements to reconstruct images that appeal to the visual subconscious and invite viewers to explore further.