Rudolf Stingel

Rudolf Stingel conceived this exhibition especially for Palazzo Grassi. Given the utmost freedom of execution, Stingel has completely transformed the museum, filling the entire space with an oriental carpet. Moving beyond the idea of two-dimensionality that is conventionally associated with painting, the exhibition aims to subvert the usual spatial relationship between a painting and viewer.

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The carpet evokes the thousand-year history of Venice, the ‘Most Serene Republic’, but also recalls the Middle-European culture so loved by the artist; for example, we are reminded of Sigmund Freud’s early twentieth-century Viennese study. This reference undoubtedly provides a key to interpreting this installation: on entering the ‘labyrinth’, an all-encompassing feeling and sensorial experience transport us towards the transcendence of the Ego, by means of its removal and its ghosts. The nearly thirty paintings exhibited suggest presences that are ‘buried’ in memory, and removed experiences that thrive again. The architectural space becomes an introspective and projective space, silent and welcoming, suitable for meditation: but Stingel’s work alters our visual and spatial perception of it, suggesting a new, rarified and suspenseful atmosphere in which the silver, white and black of the paintings stands out like so many other ‘openings’ on Venice, in an another dimension.