NICOLASA GROSPIERRE, T A T T A R R A T T A T
multimedia installation

curator: Grzegorz Musiał

12.11.2010 – 15.12.2010
Vernissage: 11.11.2010, 6 p.m.

Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Wednesday and Saturday 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Palazzo Donà, Venice

Nicolas Grospierre, awarded in 2008 with Leone d'Oro at the XI Architecture Biennale in Venice for the exposition at the Polish Pavilion, returns to Venice this autumn. From November 12 through December 15, 2010, his multimedia installation, TATTARRATTAT, will be presented in Palazzo Donà, the Venetian home to Signum Foundation.

The installation is built around a film made by the artist in Palazzo Donà in spring 2010. It was commissioned by Signum Foundation as a new site specific project in the series "Palazzo Donà – Site Specific".
The film documents a journey into the hidden monumental Palazzo. The author uses images of a converse mirror, know as "oeil de sorcière" or the wizard's eye, to guide us through the beautiful and mysterious place without revealing its secrets. On the contrary, the film renders Palazzo Donà even more fascinating by suggesting that under each layer of history there is yet another one and that there is another image within the image that we first see.

The title of the installation means "a knock on the door", as coined by James Joyce in his "Ulysses." It is also a palindrome; thus it can be read from the end as well as from the beginning. In the work by Nicolas Grosspiere it is the artist (or a curious visitor, perhaps) who knocks at the door of the unknown palazzo to see what's inside, discovering an entire world which cannot be perceived from the outside. This "knocking at the door" doesn't end because when it ends it starts anew. The curiosity for seeing even more remains unsatisfied.

In TATTARRATAT, Nicolas Grospierre expresses two principle aspects of his art: an analytic interest in sites and architecture, as well as a predominating fascination with illusion. And, as usual, he questions the verity of a photographic image.

The very technical aspects of the film can be misleading. The images which seem to be shot by a video camera are in fact a collage of more than 500 photographs assembled in a process of digital animation.

Nicolas Grospierre was born in 1985. He studied sociology at the London School of Economics and Institut d'Etudes Politique de Paris. As a multimedia artist he often photographs architecture and sites. In 2009 Signum Foundation Palazzo Donà presented his installation "Library/ Never-Ending Corridor" which is a part of the Signum collection of art since 2006.

PALAZZO DONÀ. ANTHOLOGY
CHAPTER ONE

Curated by Sebastian Cichocki

Inauguration: 22 May 2009

more...

With the first exhibition in Palazzo Donà in Venice entitled "Awake and Dream", Signum Foundation is inaugurating a cycle of long-term site specific projects.

The first project "Anthology. Chapter 1" was prepared by the artist Robert Kuśmirowski and Sebastian Cichocki, the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

The first part of this visual Anthology was realized in May 2009 during the exhibition "Awake and Dream" in Palazzo Donà.

In "Anthology. Chapter 1" the artist impersonates a researcher, archivist, and restorer, as well as a witness, artisan, and creator. Not all of his activities will be visible to the audience and not all of them will result in the creation of concrete objects. The curator will write a story parallel to the artist's action. Both components are essential to read or interpret the project which, given the particularity of the venue, could result in the testing of new curatorial strategies and of new models of perception of this multileveled artwork.

The work of Robert Kuśmirowski is characterized by a search for emotional ties between the real and the imaginary. Kuśmirowski blends "real objects" and exquisite replicas to create seemingly authentic scenes and stories. By manipulating history, he creates a future rich in quotes and points of reference. The passage of time filtered through his personal experience and universal sources, becomes a self-sustaining obsession.

The aim of this project is to offer the Palazzo a new context in which truth and invention combine in such a way as to become inseparable. In the final analysis, the gradual and leisurely evolution of this "illustrated anthology" is intended to integrate the rhythm of life in Venice with its concrete historical and theoretical reality, particularly relating to its dependence on water from which it derives its constant mutability.

L.A.S.T.L.E.A.K. PDF