The Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia presents “Apollo, Apollo,” a new installation by Katharina Grosse curated by Claire Staebler and on view during the 59th Venice Biennale. Specifically created for the location, the exhibition features a composite image of the artist’s hands printed on a metallic mesh fabric on a black background covering the floor and the wall. The borders between the artist’s material and her own body blur in the act of her creation. Beyond the imaginative paradoxes of its creator, the work also reflects its Venetian context: the metallic fluidity and hot-hued intensity of “Apollo, Apollo” resonate with the Fortuny fabrics, Terrazzo mosaics, and omnipresent reflections in the water around it.
“The image is chosen from a series of photographs showing situations or actions, connected to my painting practice in some way or another,” said Grosse. “It oscillates between surface, texture, image and object, order and disorder, destruction and creation, tension and release, forced and free-flowing movement.”
