Interviews

Over the past six years, the exhibitions of the “Trilogy of Uncertainties” by Fondazione In Between Art Film at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto have contributed to transforming this site into one of Venice’s most interesting spaces for reflecting on the role of moving images in contemporary art. With “Canicula”, the third and final chapter of a trilogy that began with “Penumbra” (2022) and continued with “Nebula” (2024), Fondazione In Between Art Film brings to completion a long-term project developed through works commissioned specifically for this site and conceived in close dialogue with its history and architecture.

On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening, Mara Sartore met Alessandro Rabottini, Artistic Director of the Foundation, and Leonardo Bigazzi, Curator, to retrace the genesis of this multi-year project, reflect on the evolution of moving images, and discuss the increasingly deep relationship that binds this experience to Venice.

RF – The fact that it remains open-ended is very important to us. Basel Social Club does have certain...

JC – I think my explanation about how different materials allow different forms of expression addresses...

Sophie Jung is a Swiss-Luxembourgish artist based in Basel whose practice moves fluidly between sculpture, installation, performance, text, and spoken narration. Working with found objects, fragments, and associative forms of storytelling, Jung creates environments in which language and material become unstable, poetic, and often ironic. Her work explores processes of accumulation, displacement, and transformation, generating tensions between intimacy and theatricality, humor and disorientation. Through assemblage and performative gestures, she investigates how meaning is constructed, interrupted, and continuously renegotiated within contemporary visual culture.

MB – More than a format, we have tried to build a method. In this case the language of projection grew...

CC – Yes. If it depended solely on me, I would stay here. I would become a new Venetian.   “Kunsthaus...

AJ – Yes, absolutely. I love Venice. We have to remember that Venice is a ville portière — a port...

From May 6th to November 2026, Il Teatro dell’Arte (NuoveFondamenta) in Venice presents Artocalypsa, a major exhibition by Czech artist David Černý, coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale. Bringing together large-scale sculptures, political provocations, and dystopian imagery, the exhibition reflects on contemporary Europe through satire, violence, and technological anxiety. This interview explores Černý’s longstanding engagement with political contradiction, the aesthetics of conflict, and the enduring ambiguity between innovation and destruction, tracing how his work confronts the collapse of collective ideals in an increasingly unstable world.

CC – For me, it is fundamental to place the word “dream” beside “political”. Doing so means...

From 9 May, the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore will present “The Shape of Time”, a major survey of the American artist Barry X Ball’s sculptural practice, which brings together technological innovation and Renaissance tradition within Andrea Palladio’s architectural masterpiece. This interview explores Ball’s practice at the intersection of art history, technology, and material experimentation. Using 3D scanning, digital modelling, robotic carving, and handwork, he develops a sculptural language that redefines the possibilities and legacy of stone.

Leo Frontini is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice brings together classical draughtsmanship and oil painting traditions with an exploration of the subconscious. Yields of Fray, his first European exhibition, Presented by Private Waters at SPARC*-Spazio Arte Contemporanea on May 4, 5:30pm, running concurrently with the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Amah-Rose Abrams, the exhibition brings together 10 paintings, 5 drawings, and three sculptures created in Los Angeles in 2025 and 2026.

In this conversation, Frontini reflects on unraveling as both process and metaphor, the subconscious as a generative space for images, and the role of imagination as refuge, resistance, and renewal in a time marked by unrest.

DL: Yes, certainly. But I do not wish to concern myself with politics, because I do not understand it...

CC – Everyone comes with their own experience. I find it strange when artists say they want the audience...

In this interview for My Art Guides, Nalini Malani reflects on "Of Woman Born", a major site-specific installation commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art as an Official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Presented within the Magazzini del Sale, the work unfolds as a continually shifting 'thought chamber' where projections, sound, and memory converge around women, myth, and global conflict.

Through layered animations and immersive environments, Malani meditates on patriarchal violence, geopolitical accountability, and the suppressed agency of women, proposing empathy, interconnectedness, and the retelling of stories as necessary tools to imagine a more humane future.

MR – “Nature Speaks. Listening for Rights of Nature in Venice and Europe” sits in the broader idea...

Creative director, designer, artist and storyteller, Marras has built a practice that spans fashion, visual arts, theatre and craft, producing a layered and highly distinctive visual imaginary. His work oscillates between memory and experimentation, between intimate dimension and collective narrative, always maintaining a strong drive towards the hybridisation of languages.
Today, with two projects underway in Milan – "Maria Lai | Antonio Marras: Paso Doble" at M77 Gallery and "Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia" at BUILDING BOX – and one in London at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, this attitude is particularly evident. The show at M77 presents a dialogue with Maria Lai, a key figure in his artistic journey; at BUILDING BOX, his work is situated within a broader reflection on textiles as a critical and contemporary language.
Marras thus confirms a practice that eludes any single definition, weaving together different forms of knowledge and expression, and reaffirming the value of gesture, materiality and storytelling in an increasingly fast-moving and dematerialised present.

MC – I would like this to become a place that is alive all year round, as far as logistical and economic...

In this interview for My Art Guides, Wallace Chan reflects on a practice that transcends the boundaries between sculpture, jewellery art, and craftsmanship. Rooted in decades of experimentation with precious materials, his work moves seamlessly from the microscopic precision of jewellery to the monumental scale of “Vessels of Other Worlds” – a project unfolding between Venice and Shangai in which sculpture, space, and perception intertwine across physical and virtual dimensions.

The Venice exhibition opens on May 8, 2026, at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, while the parallel exhibition at the Long Museum in Shanghai will open July 18, 2026. Through this dual project, Chan explores themes of spirituality, transformation, and continuity, offering a vision of art as a space where material, philosophy, and perception converge.

EK – We often become very involved in politics and worry about many things. But one thing we keep forgetting...

Meet Dries Van Noten to explore the vision behind Fondazione Dries Van Noten...

DH – Last year is a very good illustration of what we do at SMAC. As I mentioned, we had two architectural...

MK – Some images have accompanied me for years: they resurface, transform, change their weight and...

DF – We will inaugurate in mid-April, on 16 April, slightly outside the main circuit yet already present...

EB – At the moment we are working on several projects to propose to the Board of Directors for the...