La vita a Venezia

Ouch. I've just seen my last post and yes I definitely look like a posh bitch.

Judging of my non existing following post about my pretending innocent side of life, huge changes were expecting.

Dirty laundry bag behind, I've moved to Venice La Sérénissime or City of waters, I've swop my underground tube against the vaporetto and my rue Mouffetard appartement for a beautiful palace above charming canals.

On mornings, opera' singers woke me up peacefully as they entertain chinese tourists gondola' stroll and disapperared in the haziness behind punto dei Tolentini.

My lectures at the Ca'Foscari university occupying 90% of my time, I spend my free hours between the - oh god - palaces (where I've already pictured myself a hundred times in ten years with a diamond tiara, a long black dress and high red gloves) of the Gran Canal, the many art exhibitions and other cultural events of the city.

Let's have a look:

Palazzo Grassi - Punta Della Dogana website

These two magical places (the first is an 18th century jewel and the other an industrial heritage storehouse at the crossroad between the Giudeca's canal and the Gran canal) present the François Pinault collection.

As I drive a group study on it I had the chance to meet yesterday all the staff and do a much more detailed visit.

Two years ago I visited Sequence 1 exhibition and it was already amazing. The creme of contemporary art from one room to another, Urs Fischer monumental installation on the centre , Anselm Reyle's fluorescent monochrome and Mike Kelley installation.

The foundation has now taken its legitimacy in the Venitian landscape and won the concession of Punta Della Dogana last year. Mapping the studio is the binary exhibition that the two institutions are sharing, it is supposed to feature the work-in-progress of the world's famous contemporary artists...bla-bla-bla.Most expensive and less risky works of art that's it.Even if there is no link between pieces, the collection is as rich as its owner.You can dance on Nazy's on Piotr Uklański piece and pass through the red blood cell pearls of Felix Gonzales Torres. As you immerse yourself into the superflat painting technique of Takashi Murakami, two steps after you enter into the night life of Bruce Nauman studio. On the first floor of the Punta Della Dogana the Fucking Hell installation of the Chapman brothers bring you back to your childhood with 30 000 nazis plastic soldiers and a Charly to find between them (look for him, he is at the top of a hill painting a naive landscape while facing the horror of the war). Oh and yes I forgot, if you look with caution there is a dinosaur gaving birth to siamese brothers...does that make sens?

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Since I red her biography 5 years ago I have always been fascinated by PG. She was a visionary in her time, she kept falling in love with complicated artists, she got the palace life and the wardrobe I dream every night of and overall the funky sunglasses EVER. After one week in Venice, I run to buy them...ok people look at me like I am some kind of stranger here (Venice is a small small town) but I cannot tell that I am not used to or that I don't like it

Wearing this glasses while I was visiting the collection made me meet the director who thanks me for promoting PG around

A Brancusi bird sculpture, a Duchamp studiocase and a Renée Magritte Empire of light were my top three works. I've never been a big fan of Magritte and I've seen copies of Empire of light a thousand times in books, art history lectures but the real canvas is beyond comparison. The artifical and natural lights struggling in such a poetic way that you never know where Magritte let you: in the darkness of the first plan or in the cloudscapes of the second

Biennale of Architectura

I don't know anything about architecture and if there is one place in the world to appreciate it it should be the Biennale. No hindsights on it I can only tell that contemporary artists should learn from architects how to manage spaces.

Top three:

cloudscape made by german climate engineering firm and japanese firm tetsuo kondo architects explores the poetic nature of artificial cloud

Dancing waters as I nicknamed the work (I can't remember who did it) are a series of hoses dancing with the water pression in the dark. With a beam of light the waterdrop turn into diamonds and the magic occured

The Forty- Part Motet is an immersive sculpturally-conceived sound piece made by Janet Cardiff. She used 40 separately recorded voices played back through 40 speakers. Using recordings of the Salisbury Cathedral choir singing Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui (1573) by Thomas Tallis, one of England's most influential Renaissance composers.

It is probably the room where I stayed the longer in the Biennale, I've closed my eyes in the centre of the speakers and let the sound create an architecture around me.

Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti - Stanley Kubrick Photography

Long before he became the filmmaker we all know, Kubrick was a photographer. Starting as the teenarger the exhbition traces how he captured the mood of his times. The exhibtions shows 200 pictures (and is really small) but no fault. Every series underline how Kubrick was meticulous and how he framed his visions.

Two series were stunning: the first was on a 12 years old shoe-shine boy in NY and the other one on the dark side of the circus industry

The Biennale du Kitsch

The first sense of the Kitsch word is representation. Thus the exhibition organizes along the real nature of the concept 30 figurative artists.

Odd Nerdrum and Helene Knoop entered in my A-list of favourite figurative painters directly!

Many other exhibitions done, I have also attend two operas at la Fenice and one classical concert, being to Murano, San Michele cimetry, visited Scuolas and churches... but I am tired to write it down

With the gap between my last post and this one, the suspens lies in what will be the next one.

Maybe I will be the first astronaut riding the Mars Dunes or just an alcoholic surviving in a flat her brother and sister are sub-leasing for her.

Aliénor.