Guide To The Most Interesting Events In Venice 2022 // part 4 5 extra-programme exhibitions worth seeing while at Venice Biennale

If, after visiting the national pavilions and the official collateral events of the 59th Art Biennale, you are still craving more artistic experiences, Venice has even more to offer. 

To help you light up your visit and fully enjoy the incredible atmosphere of the biggest artistic event of the year we present 5 extra-programme exhibitions worth seeing while visiting Venice Biennale. 

Anish Kapoor

Venues: Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and Palazzo Priuli Manfrin 

April 20 – October 9, 2022

The exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice will be dedicated to Anish Kapoor, the first British artist to have a major exhibition at the museum. It will open on 20 April and run until 9 October 2022. The exhibition will be a comprehensive retrospective presenting crucial moments in Kapoor’s career and examining the evolution of his unique visual language. New groundbreaking works created using carbon nanotechnology will be displayed for the first time. The exhibition is curated by art historian Taco Dibbits, Director General of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

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Hermann Nitsch, 20th painting action

Vienna 1987 – Venice 2022

Venue: Oficine 800, Fondamenta S. Biagio, Venice
Organizing institution: Zuecca Projects and Galerie Kandlhofer

April 19 – July 20, 2022 

This exhibition by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch will be presented as part of Helmut Essel’s private collection in collaboration with Galerie Kandlhofer, and includes a 20th painting action that was originally created and exhibited at the Wiener Secession in Vienna in 1987. The 20th painting action is the only painting action by the artist remaining in one collection, and the exhibition will mark the first time since the work was created and exhibited together in Italy.

The reintegration of works from the 20th painting action in the historical space of the Oficine 800 on the Giudecca Island not only allows for a recapitulation of the artist’s most important works, but also allows for a fresh exploration and experience of Nitsch’s artistic ideas, situated between the ecstatic and the contemplative.

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Danh Vo, Isamu Noguchi, Park Seo-Bo

Venue: Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia  

20 April – 27 November 2022

Fondazione Querini Stampalia in collaboration with White Cube will present a major exhibition curated by artist Danh Vo and Chiara Bertoli, curator of the museum’s contemporary art programme.
Vo is known for his sensitivity to space and time, as well as to personal and collective history. She was invited to create her own vision of Fondazione’s labyrinth, consisting of ancient rooms surrounded by contemporary elements, on a continuous journey through the centuries. The exhibition is a dialogue between Danh Vo’s practice and the works of Park Seo-Bo, considered the father of the “Dansaekhwa” movement, and the American sculptor, architect, designer and set designer Isamu Noguchi. The exhibition project covers entirely the space of the historic palace, once occupied by the Venetian Querinis family, who lived there for generations, amassing collections of objects, books and, above all, works of art, which were then bequeathed to the city with the establishment of the foundation in 1869.

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Bruce Nauman

Contrapposto Studies

Venue: Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection

23 May 2021 – 27 November 2022 

The exhibition “Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies” pays tribute to one of the major figures of the international contemporary art scene and focuses on three fundamental aspects of his work: the artist’s studio as a space in which creation takes place, the body through performance, and the exploration of sound. It is curated by Carlos Basualdo, senior curator of contemporary art Keith L. and Katherine Sachs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Caroline Bourgeois, curator at the Pinault Collection. 

The exhibition at Punta della Dogana brings together older and recent works, some of which are new or have never been exhibited in Europe before. It focuses on a series of recent video installations that Nauman has created in recent years and which are related to a single-channel video from 1968, Walk with Contrapposto, in which we see the artist walking in a narrow wooden corridor built inside his studio, trying to maintain the contrapposto pose.

From April to June, Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana presents “Dancing Studies”, a cycle of new performances inspired by the work of Bruce Nauman and conceived by the choreographers William Forsythe, Lenio Kaklea, Ralph Lemon and Pam Tanowitz.

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Marlene Dumas 

open-end

Venue: Palazzo Grassi

27 March 2022 – 8 January 2023 

Palazzo Grassi presents a solo exhibition dedicated to Marlene Dumas, who is considered one of the most influential artists on the contemporary art scene. It is part of a series of monographic shows dedicated to the most important contemporary artists, launched in 2012. The exhibition, entitled ‘open-end’, is curated by Caroline Bourgeois in collaboration with the artist. It brings together over 100 works, focusing on the painter’s entire oeuvre and selecting paintings and drawings created from 1984 to the present day, including unseen works made in the last few years. 

Marlene Dumas’ work focuses on depicting human figures struggling with the most intense emotions and paradoxes.

“Painting is about the trace of the human touch. It is about the skin of a surface. A painting is not a postcard.” – Marlene Dumas

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