iFondazione Querini StampaliaCastello
Cosmotechnics: Ding Yi as a Planetary Code
Shanghai abstractionist Ding Yi shows new black-and-white paintings and stone steles from his Appearance of Crosses series, curated by Cramerotti and Scalera.
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In 1988, as a student in Shanghai, Ding Yi started painting crosses, a "+" or an "x", and he says he has "never strayed from this course" since. Here the crosses come in black and white, cut into basswood and stone.
Twelve new relief paintings, each 240 by 120 cm, stand in Carlo Scarpa's rooms as a "constellation", placed along a winding path the curators liken to a traditional Chinese garden. You weave between them and catch each panel from several angles. Seven earlier works, from the 1980s on, trace how the crosses got here, and two carved stone steles nod to Xi'an's Stele Forest.
It is Ding Yi's first solo show during a Venice Biennale since he took part in the Biennale's first exhibition of Chinese art in 1993. The €15 day ticket (€12 reduced) covers it along with the collections, the Scarpa Area and the garden. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00.
Look for
The twelve-panel constellation
Look for twelve black-and-white basswood reliefs of identical size, 240 by 120 cm, set out so you walk a meandering path among them.
The two stone steles
Look for two stone slabs carved with the cross motif, one incised and one in relief, which the artist ties to the steles civilisations used to record their history.
The seven earlier works
Look for pieces from the 1980s onward that show the crosses moving from strict grids into painting, sculpture and architecture.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want colour: all twelve new paintings are strictly black and white.
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Image credits
9
- Cosmotechnics: Ding Yi as a Planetary Code© Ding Yi. Courtesy Lisson Gallery and ShanghART Gallery
- Amoako BoafoCourtesy of Museo di Palazzo Grimani
- The Silks of Lucio AndrichCourtesy of Palazzo Mocenigo – Museum of Textiles and Costume
- Venice Pavilion: Note PersistentiCourtesy of La Biennale di Venezia (Giardini & Arsenale)
- Fondazione Querini StampaliaDidier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo di Palazzo GrimaniSailko / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace)Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Ocean Space (Chiesa di San Lorenzo)Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Archeologico Nazionale di VeneziaAbxbay / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain