Voice of Images

The exhibition Voice of Images, a selection from the video collection of the François Pinault Foundation, illustrates the vast range of artistic expression allowed by this medium – installations, simple projections, audio recordings, silent pieces – to present works by 27 international artists, hailing from China to Venezuela, and including those of Bill Viola, the pioneer of art of the moving image, and Bruce Nauman‘s masterpiece, “For Beginners”, shown here for the first time in Europe. The works presented cover a period ranging from the 1970s to its most recent acquisitions.

The aim of the exhibition is to offer visitors a sensory journey that oscillates, through the gaze of the artists, between solemnity, angst, humor, and levity… The works presented aren’t merely descriptive: they invite the viewer to share in an artistic experience that goes beyond merely looking and speaking. Marie-José Mondzain said: “The image isn’t there for what it shows but for the infinite field that it offers to the gaze.”

The path of the exhibition is determined by the architecture of Palazzo Grassi, playing on the specificities of the site, particularly on the contrast between the open spaces devoted to installations that don’t require complete darkness, and the enclosed, dark- ened spaces. Thus it develops according to an almost musical cadence, alternating between light and darkness, sound and silence.