Utopia”, curated by Michael Koetzle and Denis Curti, and “Ferdinando Scianna. The Ghetto of Venice 500 years later”, curated by Denis Curti. The exhibition dedicated to Ferdinando Scianna is the result of the photographic work carried out on behalf of the Venice Foundation and created especially for the Tre Oci on the occasion of the XNUMXth anniversary of the foundation of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice.
The two different projects will unfold autonomously following a coherent and linear path, which will develop starting from the 100 works by René Burri, distributed between the ground floor and the main floor, and will end on the second floor, with over 50 unpublished photographs by Ferdinando Scianna.
Both members of the prestigious Magnum photographic agency, Burri (who would become its president in 1982) and Scianna belong, despite their diversity, to that category of authors who express personal visions through the medium of photography, whether they translate into Burri's passion for documenting great political and social changes, whether they respond to the attempt, in Scianna's case, to snatch "instants of meaning and form" within the chaotic flow of existence.
Utopia by René Burri (Zurich, 1933-2014) brings together, for the first time, over 100 images by the great Swiss artist dedicated to architecture, with shots of famous buildings and portraits of architects.
Burri's photography arises from the need to tell the great transformation processes and historical, political and cultural changes of the twentieth century with a strong focus on some characters (his portraits of Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso are unforgettable) who were part of it.
Utopia – which is held simultaneously with the 2016 Architecture Biennale – fits within this perspective, as Burri conceives architecture as a real political and social operation which conveys and imposes a vision on the world, and which prompted him to travel between Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America in the footsteps of the great architects of the twentieth century, from Le Corbusier to Oscar Niemeyer, from Mario Botta to Renzo Piano, from Tadao Ando to Richard Meier.
Alongside their portraits and their buildings, in Utopia we also find images of historical events particularly full of contrasts and hopes, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the spring of 1989.
The top floor of the Casa dei Tre Oci is dedicated to the work of one of the most important Italian photographers, Ferdinando Scianna (Bagheria, 4 July 1943). On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice (formed on 29 March 1516), the Fondazione di Venezia has decided to launch a photographic survey with the aim of narrating the contemporary dimension of the Ghetto. The exhibition project is created by Civita Tre Venezie.
Scianna has created a photographic reportage in full Street Photography style, collecting images relating to the daily life of the Ghetto, without neglecting portraits, architecture, interiors of houses and places of prayer. Churches, restaurants, fields, gondolas are the subjects that animate the visual panorama of the project. Worth noting, in this narration, is the coexistence of a symbolic, historical, ritual dimension, intrinsically connected to places and gestures, and a simplicity in the description of a present and ordinary time.
“Ferdinando Scianna – observes the curator Denis Curti – has been able to construct a delicate story […]. He has given shape to a collective memory by elevating and distinguishing individual stories: one perceives their beauty and solemnity. […] The unscreamed pain of the Holocaust. The stumbling blocks and the signs of a story destined to remain indelible. [...] Inside these photographs one orients oneself. The cardinal points embrace each other and mark the lines of a visual confidence capable of entering the confines of the intimacy of the many portraits that make up the complex mosaic of this experience: it is the language of affections, it is the grammar of bodies”.
Venice, House of the Three Oci
Friday 26 August 2016 – Sunday 8 January 2017
