(di) Fronte

On the occasion of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, Mare Karina presents (di) Fronte, a group exhibition staged in Trattoria Da Jonny, across the square from the gallery. The show gathers small-format works by contemporary artists connected to Venice—some born here, others passing through as students or residents—ranging in age from 24 to 36. Their works, primarily paintings, form an ephemeral constellation in the trattoria’s rooms, as if they had always belonged there.

This curatorial gesture resonates closely with “Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and Magazines for Contemporary Art and Architecture”, the gallery’s concurrent exhibition of historical materials. Alfieri, a publisher and critic, championed the role of publishing as a multidisciplinary cultural infrastructure in postwar Italy. The dialogue between these two shows highlights a practice with deep roots in the Venetian context: the exhibition of contemporary art in restaurants and taverns.

This tradition took shape in the late 1940s, when venues like Ristorante all’Angelo became informal cultural hubs for artists, critics, and collectors. It was there that the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti emerged in 1946, led by Giuseppe Marchiori. The restaurant displayed triptychs by Vedova, Santomaso, and Pizzinato; it was also the site where Peggy Guggenheim met Venice’s avant-garde, accompanied by a young Alfieri.

In this context, restaurateurs became collectors, artworks were exchanged for meals, and collections formed organically. “(di) Fronte” revives this model, not as nostalgia, but as a reflection on Venice’s unique interplay between artistic practice, everyday life, and cultural memory – and it draws strength precisely from the resonances with that Venice so vividly evoked in the Bruno Alfieri exhibition in Mare Karina gallery on the opposite side of the square.

Artists: Alessandro Miotti, Alice Moschetta, Camilla Giannotti, Daniele Antoniazzi, Francesco Casati, Francesco Zanatta, Gianpaolo Murtas, Giuseppe Di Liberto, Jlenia Renier, Jure Kastelic, Maddalena Pamio, Marila Scartozzi, Michele Cesaratto, Pierluigi Scandiuzzi

Curator: Marta Barina