Travis Jeppesen at Artforum:
IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH to be in Venice on a sunny day, it will take your eyes a while to adjust after you enter the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove on the northern bank of Cannaregio. A curtain is lifted, and suddenly you are enshrouded in darkness. It is nearly all-engulfing: Just across from the entrance, there is a single spotlight forming a circle on the floor, toward which your eyes naturally gravitate. By now your internal rhythm has been disrupted, for that is the abrupt and halting impact of darkness on a body previously attuned to sunlight, sea air, the pastel patchwork of color and stone forming the Venetian scape. And so, having arrived at a standstill, you fumble your way through the dark, toward that meditative state that the darkness demands, toward the spotlight forming a perfect circle on the ground in order to focus on what it contains: a single rock, just large enough to fit in the palm of a hand. And now you’ve come the full way, from the ethereal light and sea of the outside to the darkness and confrontation with solidity on the inside. And it is now, as your eyes gradually adjust, that you come to realize you are actually in a theater, that there are rows of seats just beyond that spotlit rock, and so you carefully step backwards until you find a space to sit, because inevitably you’ve walked a long way to get here.
more here.
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