Lucio Fontana / Antony Gormley

About

The exhibition takes shape inside an extraordinary space: the Negozio Olivetti, property of Generali Assicurazioni and entrusted to the care and management of FAI, an architectural jewel completed in 1958 and nestled in the porticoes of Piazza San Marco in Venice and designed by Carlo Scarpa.

The exhibition has been conceived and curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, one of the world’s leading scholars of Lucio Fontana as well as a scientific consultant to the Foundation dedicated to the artist.  The exhibition is built around a concise association of space and light to be found in the work of both sculptors. It develops across a selection of drawings made by Fontana between 1946 and 1968 and a series of drawings, workbooks and models that run through all aspects of Antony Gormley's research, together with the presence of some sculptures by both of the artists.

Lucio Fontana: I make holes; infinity passes through, light passes, there is no need to paint … everyone thought that I wanted to destroy: but that’s not true, I’ve created, not destroyed.

Antony Gormley: Lucio Fontana spent a lifetime revealing the fact that space exists behind appearance and inviting us to experience it. I am thrilled to have this opportunity to have a dialogue with him through objects and drawings in which body and space are continually seen as equivalent mediums of apprehension.

Luca Massimo Barbero: Fontana and Gormley’s work with sculpture goes beyond time. In Lucio Fontana’s works space becomes a timeless and ahistorical place. Sign and body interact intimately in the conceptual path that supports Antony Gormley's research and that leads to the total rupture of the boundaries imposed between inside and outside, space and time.