scating on canal grande

Artists: Carolin Buehler, Murray Gaylard, Elisabeth Hatscher, Britta Kamptner, Xue Liu, Silja Nordhoff, Sarah Schoderer, Rene Schohe, Jessica Sehrt, Cristina Szilly und Prof’in Christa Naeher

Pressrelease: Clichés obstruct the view on Venice. To make out something real about Venice is almost impossible. The enormous care and effort with which the Venecians try to keep up an image of Venice, that ist elegant and beautiful and cannot be tranformed to a touristy moloch, remains striking. A common access to Venice seems to be blocked.

We have asked ourselves, what kind of relations develop between those 60.000 citizens, 10.000 students, 15.00 citizens with a secondary residence in Venice and those who are travelling through or staying in Venice just for a short time? Every year there are 14 million tourists visiting Venice. How does Venice become an experience after all? Isn´t it alive nevertheless? Maybe the Significance of Venice lies in the fact that it appears as its own idea, that it carries inside. That Venice is an allegory as well, makes the approach difficult, because for Venice Schlegels statement, that "all Beauty is allegory", proves right. In the Romanticism the allegory is related to the unspeakable through the beauty, and the aesthetical independance is justified through the unity of image and sense, as which the allegory was tried to be interpreted.

"Venice, so they say, has the form of a fish. And just like a sea creature it moves in a lagoon, sinks under the water surface, but rises again to draw breath, curious and anxious it observes the tourists, who, armed with masks and cameras, move through the city, always ready to crawl back in their houses like a hermit crab." (Paola Cantu, 2008)

In the exhibition SCHLITTSCHUHLAUFEN AUF CANAL GRANDE (scating on Canal Grande) students from the art class of Prof. Christa Näher (Städelschule Frankfurt am Main), who went together to Venice in December 2007, work on the topic Venice. This is a venture: The participating artists litterary move on ice. There is the threat of a romantic transfiguration of this big fish "Venice", that glides through the fingers, as they try to grasp it.

Will the search for traces in Venice bring forth more than just a trace? Will it lead through the exhibition like ice, that either melts or in infinite channels scratches up Venice? On this an exhibition can present a plurality of sights, who are not conform, who resist against the cliché. A catalog of the exhibition with texts from Paola Cantu, Italo Testa and an interview with Uwe Israel is available. Contact: info(at)leonhardikulturprojekte.org