Installation view of “The Arch within the Arc”
Collages in square and rectangular formats of various sizes hang on the walls of the Palazzo Grimani in the Castello neighborhood of Venice. Their backgrounds of bright, primary colors radiate against the age-old plaster, and the rigid structures of frames and stretchers are balanced by the geometric patterns contained within organic shapes like concentric circles and ovals. The Arch within the Arc by Rick Lowe at the Palazzo Grimani is about the architecture of the arch, and more specifically, the arch within the urban landscape and culture of the city of Venice itself. In Lowe’s hands, both the arch and the arc are not inanimate objects but seem to radiate with movement and life.
Most of us recognize Rick Lowe and his work through his hand in social sculpture, his work with communities, and his legacy in the city of Houston. Here, however, at the Palazzo Grimani and in the city of Venice, Lowe’s collages are like the mythical maps of a city both collapsing and radiating from itself. The works are like a bird’s eye view of attempts at navigating the city — getting lost, turning around, hitting a dead end, turning around again, and generally mapping a place through failed attempts at arriving. This is common in Venice which is a dense and layered city of winding, alley-like roads, streets that are anything but straight, where the presence of water is everywhere, and where the light refracts with the humidity that sits thick over the city.
A work by Rick Lowe in “The Arch Within the Arc”
The Palazzo Grimani is perhaps the perfect setting for this exhibition and one of the few remaining examples of a residence inspired by the Renaissance Roman mannerist style in Venice. Lowe’s exhibition is the finale within the space. Reaching the exhibition requires following a set path that leads up a magnificent barrel-vaulted central stairway covered with classical paintings surrounded by gold leaf, after which a red carpet indicates a pathway that leads through room after room filled with remnants of intricate frescoes, marble fireplaces, carpets and textiles showing their age of time, and punctuated by a room full of classical sculpture sitting in niches and on shelves.
The Palazzo Grimani is a remnant of the original opulence of Venice, and a source of architectural pride. Venice is an architectural and engineering marvel. It is a city of opulence, of arches and bridges that are not just necessary functional elements that sustain the weight of a building and connect one island to the other, but an opportunity for decadent design touches. Both the arch and the arc are the shapes that connect the city, offering movement both above and below. The arch functions for crossing a bridge from one island to the other on land, and the arc for one passing under a bridge and on water. Life, both on land and water makes Venice even more physically layered and more confusing than Google Maps can account for. Lowe’s complicated collages are like the layers of history and the colors that exist in the city, like wallpaper peeling back from plaster walls.
Two large scale-works from Rick Lowe’s “The Arch Within the Arc”
The large canvases are impressive, their density and tightness akin to historical maps that emphasize the vastness of a place rather than the specific streets and directions. These are not maps meant to orient but to show the density of a place, and they are intimidating. The smaller works, however, show much more detail and intimacy, drawing the viewer in like wells of concentric circles, and these were the ones I was drawn to the most. Perhaps it is because the larger works require stepping back further to see the entire piece, whereas the smaller works make one really look, get really close, and get lost in the details. The nuanced movement within these works is slow, subtle, and carefully rendered. These were the works that were the most surprising, especially in a place as intimidating as the Palazzo Grimani for its architecture and history, and the city of Venice itself which lends itself to confusion and getting lost in the layers of both above and below.
The Arch within the Arc is more than a series of collages on canvas, it is the artist’s viewfinder of experience of the city situated in a treasure of a building that stands as a unique memorial to a rare architectural time. The exhibition is intimate and layered, and the works are reflective of the care and delicacy that Lowe applies to social sculpture.
