Alex Hartley: Closer Than Before

The artist presents an architectural intervention, transforming the gallery into a scene of post-Acqua Alta: the water has retreated leaving in its wake a horizontal tide-line around the whole gallery space. The main back wall has absorbed the water and the bottom sections have crumbled away revealing another space, where the cast detailing with a closed doorway is now visible, suggestive of the architectural language of Carlo Scarpa at Tomba Brion. Hartley’s artistic practice aims at showing new ways of physically experiencing and thinking about our constructed surroundings, through surface and line, scale and materials, locations and context.

During his residency in Venice between 2021 and 2022, he immersed himself in the world of Carlo Scarpa, visited and photographed public spaces as well as private homes designed by the architect and studied materials such as marble in Carrara.