Remember the sea
The group exhibition Remember the sea pays tribute to the sea through the eyes of three Venetian artists – photographer Andrea Avezzù, painters Davide Battistin and Vittorio Marella – plus those if the multifaceted Viennese artist and photographer Barbara Luisi. Four highly personal visions, each of which conveys an imagery linked to its own powerful relationship with the sea.
Venice and the sea. The story of a people who, starting from an archipelago of small muddy islands in a lagoon in the northern Adriatic, built the greatest maritime empire of the Middle Ages. A story of ships and valiant sea captains such as Enrico Dandolo, who led the Venetian fleet to the conquest of Constantinople at the age of eighty and suffering from blindness.
In Venetian history, the sea has always represented the symbolic element of power, but also of discovery and innovation. The progressive degradation of the relationship between Venice and the sea has devastating effects, not so much for the loss of profits from trade, but for the interruption of a formidable model of development based on the flow of new energy and information from the world that Venetian travellers brought with them on their return to the lagoon. Venice was, thanks to them, a world centre of arts, industries and, above all, new ideas. It was no coincidence that the sea was the main educational experience for young people, who were soon at a young age by their families far from their comfortable city to learn about the world and train themselves by acquiring courage. The oblivion of the sea deprived Venetians of their creative force, gradually turning them into an essentially unproductive people living off the commercial exploitation of the superb heritage they had inherited. It was a ruinous drifting characterised by ambiguous nostalgia for past glories and a dangerous self-referentiality, fortunately mitigated by the presence of new Venetians who, by virtue of Venice's extraordinarily unchanged power of attraction, continue to settle in the lagoon.
The group exhibition Remember the sea pays tribute to the sea through the eyes of three Venetian artists – photographer Andrea Avezzù, painters Davide Battistin and Vittorio Marella – plus those if the multifaceted Viennese artist and photographer Barbara Luisi. Four highly personal visions, each of which conveys an imagery linked to its own powerful relationship with the sea.
The photographs of Andrea Avezzù, who has long worked mainly by night, seem to scrutinise the matter of the sea in search of its own density and intrinsic light. What emerges from his works is the strength and mystery, but also the astonishment of man before the power of the sea. His photographs are sometimes a punch in the stomach, presenting the sea as a metaphor for life and reminding us of the importance of courage.
Davide Battistin paints the sea of dreams. Of our dreams and of his dreams. Our desire to travel as an escape from an everyday life that does not offer enough, in which we lead narrow lives struggling with the deep needs of our soul, scatters in its infinite horizons. Battistin's seas are the quintessence of freedom. But they are also chimera, perfect worlds we can only yearn for. We can only dream of them, losing ourselves in the infinite horizons that no one like Battistin knows how to create with his painting.
Vittorio Marella, a young Venetian artist, takes us far away, starting from the sea at home. The sea of the Lido. The sea that belongs to us, with its colours, winds and smells. With the painting La naufraga felice (The Happy Shipwreck), the Lido sea becomes the stage for a performance between drama and myth. Marella elevates the sea to a strongly metaphysical dimension, infusing us with feelings that oscillate between deep anguish and amazement at the beauty of the world.
Barbara Luisi exhibits three photographs from the Dreamland series. Luisi's night shots, taken on the shores of locations on different continents around the world, speak to us of a specific, strongly cosmopolitan background. Barbara Luisi is a nomad in desperate search of beauty. Her eclectic gaze wanders avidly and delicately, scrutinising every aspect of reality with penetrating curiosity. A new Venetian from afar with her inseparable violin, after having lived for a long time in New York, Japan and Austria, Barbara has chosen Venice as her home. Venice that is increasingly a city of the world
An ideal place for citizens of the world.