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Fernando Casasempere - 'Venice: City of Dreams?' Exhibition

15 January 2007

Venice: City of Dreams? - Fundraising Exhibition for the benefit of St George's Anglican Church, Venice 400th Annivesary Appeal.
Sotheby's, Conduit Street Gallery, London W1
15-19 January 2007

Fernando Casasempere, whose new work Under the Forest will be installed at Jerwood Sculpture at Ragley later this year, has contributed another new work to Venice: City of Dreams?, a fund raising exhibition on view at Sotheby's Conduit Street Gallery in London W1 from 15 to 19 January 2007:

Fernando Casasempere
Venice Landscape
Porcelain and stoneware coloured with industrial waste on steel jacks
1.10 m high, sculpture in eight parts, occupying an area approx. 3 x 4 m
Courtesy of Studio Caparrelli, London

Reviewing the exhibition in Times2, Michael Glover writes, ‘Fernando Casasempere's eight-part sculpture Venice Landscape is the most extravagant and memorable piece in the show. Here, hoisted up on a series of steel jacks, are what look like fragile remnants of a decaying place rescued from ruin. We see the rough walls and the cupola of a church, its walls swollen and decrepit, its dome like some helmet that has been repeatedly beaten by Thor's hammer. All this ceramic decrepitude has been lifted up and beyond the reach of the menace of water like some old dame raising her skirts' ('Damp reflections of a rouged old dame', Times2, 16 January 2007).

Casasempere travelled to Venice as a guest of St George's Anglican Church to create a new work inspired by the city. He explains in the exhibition catalogue, ‘I decided to involve myself in this project the way an archaeologist approaches the site of his research, where with little fragments of information, he builds up his theory.

‘I considered seven elements of the city, itself an archaeological site:
· it's amazing colour, typical of Italian cities
· it's structure, based on islands
· the constant presence of water: its impact on the architecture and the city
· the image which Canaletto has formed in our collective consciousness
· the feeling of death and instability that can be sensed all over Venice
· the 1.10 metre tide which activates the city's sirens and
· the mechanical solutions that are being developed today to try to solve the problems inherent in the city's very creation

‘The other thing that amazes me is how great an example Venice is when it comes to tackling the issues with which we are confronted in today's world. This city has been able to blend influences, east and west, based on an exchange of cultures and commerce.

‘Nor must we forget the devastating effect that global warming will have on Venice...' (Artist's statement in Venice: City of Dreams?, Sotheby's exhibition catalogue, London, 2007, p.21).

For more information about Fernando Casasempere visit http://www.fernandocasasempere.com