Film still from Julian Charrière's Controlled Burn (2022)

Spiral Economy. Charrière and Canova

Last chance30 April 2026 – 22 November 2026€35

Julian Charrière's works in dialogue with Canova's marbles in the Canova Galleries, on stone, geological memory and deep time.

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On now All of November 2026

The show starts with a vending machine peeking out between the museum's curtains. Its metal coils hold ammonite fossils instead of crisps, multiplied by a play of mirrors, so stone that took millions of years to form waits to be bought like a snack. It's the only vending machine on St Mark's Square stocked with snacks older than the city.

From there the route through the Canova rooms alternates Charrière's work with Canova's marbles. You stand by the young Canova's Icarus while a drone film, Controlled Burn, flies through fireworks, rusting smokestacks and open-pit coal mines. Albedo, shot in the Arctic Ocean, pairs drifting icebergs and whale calls with the Venus Italica, and further on twelve industrial clocks sit crusted over with salt.

Exibart's writer read it as marble, machines and glaciers sharing one fate of decay. There's no separate ticket: it's part of the St Mark's Square Museums ticket (€35, €15 reduced, under-6s free). From 1 November last entry is 16:00, and it closes 22 November.

Look for

The fossil vending machine
Look for it at the very start, between the curtains: ammonite fossils sit in the dispenser's metal coils, repeated endlessly by mirrors.
Controlled Burn beside Icarus
Next to Canova's early Icarus, a drone film flies through fireworks, old oil platforms and coal mines, with ferns and Carboniferous moths appearing in the smoke.
Albedo and the Venus Italica
Icebergs filmed in the Arctic Ocean drift like planets to an underwater chorus of orcas and whales, paired with Canova's Venus.
The salt-eaten clocks
In the later rooms, twelve industrial clocks have been swallowed by salt and mineral crusts.