Venice Pavillion – Artefici del nostro tempo collective exhibition

This is a collective exhibition featuring four emerging artists under 35, who after winning the first prizes for every category of the ”Artefici del Nostro Tempo” award, are presenting their works at the Venice Pavilion throughout the entire duration of the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale; ”In Minor Keys”.

The selected artists are Elisa Capucci, Nicole Colombo, Jonathan Soliman and Rebecca Zen.

The four artists, with different media and languages, interpret together this year’s theme of the Venice Biennale, ”In Minor Keys”. Through sculpture, installation, photography, and painting, their works explore fragile states of transformation, suspension, memory, and resistance.

Elisa Capucci, with ”The Post-material Archive 03”, presents an installation centered on the evolving life cycle of a hybrid organism. Through casting and the assemblage of industrial materials, urban residues, and speculative imagined anatomies, the work reflects on mutation and coexistence between bodies, species, and temporalities.
Nicole Colombo’s ”Take a Deep, Deep Breath” introduces a tense and suspended sculptural presence, driven by its own weight and vulnerability. Soft surfaces, tactile memory, and references to pain and catharsis transform the the whip, freed from its historical function, in an evolving dancing being: it rediscovers itself as sculpture, becoming beauty able to transform suspension into action.
Jonathan Soliman, with ”It’s a Fire”, inspired by the Portishead song, presents a diptych of Polaroids displayed inside their original cartridges. The photos capture fragments of disturbed nature. Grass, branches, and shadows emerge as unstable traces that, once paired together, create a delicate balance between disappearance and reconstruction.
In Rebecca Zen’s painting ”Il rumore di una foresta che cade”, the title refers to the well-known aphorism, “A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest,” attributed to Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher of the 1st century b.c. The painting depicts a falling, dark forest illuminated by a warm grazing light. Reflecting on contemporary perception, the work becomes an analog act of resistance, inviting viewers to contemplate silent yet profound changes shaping the world around us.