It all begins with a small banner on social media that invites me to go and visit the international group show This is not a show [I’m not here] produced by No Title Gallery and curated by Francesco Liggieri who opened its doors at the multi-disciplinary spaces of Venice Art Project in Venice. What I know perfectly well about No Title Gallery is that they remained stationary for about 4 years before getting back on the road in a period of pandemic, while everyone in the cultural sector, was standing still. I have known this reality since they presented themselves in Milan with a group show with another impactful name: About New Ideas. That exhibition stayed in my mind because it was out of any scheme and showed works by established artists together with artists at their first exhibition, a perfect combination.

I decide to go to Venice and visit the new exhibition. Venice is always worth a trip and even if the covid restrictions certainly do not make it pleasant, I keep myself busy looking online for something about the project. I find many things including the No Title Gallery website that tells in detail what to expect. The dedicated page seems almost made for those who will not be able to visit the exhibition but would still like to see it in some way; there are photos of the works on display, captions, the press release only the catalog is missing but I see that one can buy it online. I do so.

In Venice, after a series of wrong streets, I arrive in front of the space, and the first thing I notice is the immense visual shock between the very old exhibition space and the works on display. I stay a few minutes to observe, pleasantly struck by everything that my brain can store in a single great sensation: the journey is worth the ticket.

The group exhibition should be visited by following the room sheet which shows us a path that the curator has created for the public. We find in the hall sheet a QRcode that leads us to see the captions of each work and tells us something about the artists on display. The first work I look at is the quadriptych by Antonio Campanella, photographic portraits dated 2008 that smell of wear on the faces of the protagonists. Immediately following the Alaa Edris video, where an adult figure plays in an abandoned building in the desert, breaking things and remembering a past childhood. Paula Sunday‘s diptych addresses identity as an always important topic. Wang Jingyun‘s installation brings light not only metaphorically but also in fact: rays of light that make their way through a mountain of tree leaves. Finally, the triptych by Valentina Biasetti, a look at the depths of the human soul, without any prejudice.

I have goosebumps, the press release comes to mind where it is highlighted that: it is an exhibition that talks precisely about this, about what undermines the human being, his internal landscape and what surrounds him. That conflict that resides in all of us and that through the works on display leads to an excursion into fragments of life and worlds where we can meet. The works examine the various parts of these conflicts within man with thematic, style and technique to accompany the viewer on a journey within himself. It seems to have taken part not in a visit to an exhibition, but to have passed through a place after a bombing.

I observe the works and I understand that everything is perfectly pigeonholed in the time of the last two years where each of us has had to contend with ourselves and deal with everything else when it went wrong. I sit where I can observe the whole exhibition without being disturbed. No Title Gallery has created a project that meets and tells the time in which we live, it has built a mirror through the works where each visitor can mirror himself and live his own self, or at least try to do it. A unique exhibition. An exhibition that I am happy to have visited. If you missed this little gem, the No Title Gallery website will help you at least in digital form to feel its strength and contemporaneity.

Carlo Occhipinti

Info:

VAP Venice Art Projects
Fondamenta S. Gioacchin, 1830, 30122 Venezia VE