The Academy of Fine Arts of Venice and Flash Art present
Peter Halley, Heterotopia I May 8 – August 10, 2019
Curated by Gea Politi
Opening May 7, 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm
The Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, and Flash Art magazine present Heterotopia I, an installation by Peter Halley on the occasion of the 2019 Venice Biennale.
The installation will be held in the Academy of Fine Art’s exhibition space located in one of Venice’s historic salt warehouses, Magazzini del Sale, no. 3, at Dorsoduro 264, Zattere.
The exhibition is curated by Gea Politi, director of Flash Art, and will run from May 8 through August 10.
Using the forty-meter-long exhibition space, Halley has assembled a sequence of eight interconnected rooms that employ digitally-printed wall murals, a varying palette of artificial lighting, and three-dimensional objects to create a hermetic, coded heterotopia – a term borrowed from Michel Foucault, who defined heterotopia as a differentiated, bordered space created for a special purpose that both mirrors and defines itself as separate from everyday spaces.
Halley has invited three artists to collaborate with him on this installation. Lauren Clay and Andrew Kuo have each created wall murals for one of the eight rooms. R.M. Fischer has constructed a large-scale, totemic sculpture which inhabits the final chamber. Additionally, original wall text was provided by writer Elena Sorokina.
Halley’s installation both echoes themes present in his previous work while adding new elements of architectural pastiche specific to its setting in Venice.
The exhibition has the kind support of MSGM. Massimo Giorgetti, creative director of the brand, has conceived a capsule collection MSGM/Flash Art, available only at the Magazzini del Sale in Venice.
The set up of Heterotopia I was made by FusinaLab.
“May You Live In Interesting Times”, the title of this year’s Venice
Biennale, opens a discussion on the uncertain state of our times. Our “interesting times” are unclear; the word “interesting” can lead to several interpretations. These times force us to pose new questions about how we can prepare for such a precarious era. Peter Halley’s dynamic postindustrial environment creates both isolation and connection, a state of tension that mirrors our rapidly changing mediascape — a theoretical terrain that the artist has been exploring since the late 1970s.”
Gea Politi
Flash Art, Director
“Our classrooms and laboratories spring creative energy and knowledge, they are places for training and research from which the future of art originates, the direct contact with those who trace the path of art at an international level such as Peter Halley becomes a fundamental asset and having such project organized by Flash Art is a great occasion for the new generations of students to collaborate with a media and viceversa.”
Giuseppe La Bruna
Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Director
