What's On

(e lucean le stelle) at SAN SALVADOR CHURCH
"CON SIDERA - DE SIDERA"
06 Dicembre 2009 / 10 Gennaio 2010

CON SIDERA - DE SIDERA The exhibition "Con-sidera De-sidera" of the installation "...e lucean le stelle" by Annalù (Annaluigia Boeretto) has been opened on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at San Salvador Church in Venice with the consent of the Venice Patriarchy - Ecclesiastic Property Department - Valorisation Office.
The exhibition will go on till January, 10th, 2010
Every tuesday at 6 p.m. a performance of the actress SABINA TUTONE and the violinist GUIA CAMARRI.

As you enter the Church of San Salvador your attention is immediately drawn to a large black canvas hanging in the right aisle, which looks out of place in the surrounding Renaissance architecture and decoration. Your imagination is then captured by the sublime play of lights and reflections of the stars suspended in the upper part of Annalù’s installation. Observing it, you feel as if you were now isolated in a different and unusual reality. Although an exceptional and separate reality, in that it is not part of the Church, the installation is nonetheless a point of prayer and spiritual concentration: a “sidereal” dimension in which the stars focus and direct the observer’s thought.
There is mastery in how Annalu gives delicacy and lightness to the playful movement of the two hands suspended in the dark void. They are white hands, of the finest ceramic, emerging from the infinite darkness. Hands that give a linear movement to the spheres as they get smaller and smaller and become distant dots, fragments, ideas and finally dust. A silvery stardust that, reflecting the magnificent sky in the upper part of the installation, gathers at the base of the canvas and merges with the fragments of broken planets. (In the artist’s vision: planets awaiting to be filled with the stardust and put into the firmament.)
It is a playfully joyous work of art, an allusion to the infinite and divine creation, a mirror image of the majestic Madonna by Campagna in that it recalls the Annunciation and the miracle of divine light becoming human. And yet the stardust also offers a perceptive insight into human destiny and the topical “memento mori”: what role do we as humans play in this universe created by God?
One cannot but feel insignificantly small and vulnerable standing before the magnificence of the immensely infinite universe represented in this work. The large size and impressive height of the black canvas on which this artist’s ideal firmament is presented, contribute ─ even if momentarily ─ to a spontaneous reflection and meditation in the viewer. The same spiritual concentration that a fallible and fragile humanity often considers and desires.
Petra Schaefer
Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani

Opening Times:

The Church opens every day from 9 to 12 and from 3 to 6.
The installation will be visitable until January 10th, 2010.

Tickets and Booking:

free entry