Alex Hartley’s eerie ode to Carlo Scarpa in Venice
Alex Hartley’s theatrical new installation ‘Closer than Before’ at Victoria Miro Venice is a haunting take on architectural destruction
![Installation view Alex Hartley: Closer Than Before 22 April – 17 June 2023 Victoria Miro Venice, Il Capricorno, San Marco 1994, Calle Drio La Chiesa, 30124 Venice](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/TFs5DwbPvqD8Z2aT5yGRm7-415-80.jpg)
‘I'm aware that it’s a triggering thing,’ Alex Hartley says, looking at the watermark that runs around the Victoria Miro Gallery in Venice. ‘I live next to a river and we flood every two or three years, so I know that it's a trauma; often the threat of it is worse than the reality.’ There’s an eerie sense of foreboding through the entire exhibition ‘Closer than Before’, which links the British artist’s new artworks with a site-specific installation, of which the tidemark is just the start. The space has borne the sign before, but it’s the first time it’s been applied by hand. Hartley hand-collected dirt from the lagoon to create a surreal echo of the past, or a warning of the future. ‘The beauty of the space put me off before,’ he says, ‘trying to rub a bit of something into it, to mess that up has been important… I like this idea that there's this threat that nature is taking back dominance.’
Alex Hartley, This isn't the Time, 2023, Silver gelatin fibre photographic print on Dibond, pencil and graphite on cartridge paper
The gallery is transformed, the imaginary tide breaking through one white-washed wall to unearth a hidden history, linear concrete motifs and the curve of a circular entranceway set with dark glass. In Venice, where a 16th-century palazzo already lies behind the contemporary white cube of the gallery space, the pseudo-archaeological uncovering of modernist architecture set between them is incredibly convincing. ‘A lot of it was just about how you could build that illusion into 30cm,’ says Hartley, ‘trying to stop it being theatre and keep it real. It really is concrete. It’s not just dress theatre, so that was the battle of it. The details of the rubble went on last and quite often that last bit brings it alive, and makes you start to work your own narrative onto it.’
The installation was inspired by the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, in particular Tomba Brion (the Brion family cemetery, part of Wallpaper’s Carlo Scarpa Venice tour), which became a site of pilgrimage for Hartley during his residency: ‘I went over and over again, I couldn’t get over how it felt like a bizarre portal to another world.’
The energy of Scarpa’s work fascinated him: ‘When you spend time in those spaces, looking at architecture, I can nearly always understand how a decision has been made by the architect. With Scarpa, it feels completely right, but I can't work out the logic about how he came to it. His connection to maths and how that fits within nature is a bit beyond anyone else.’
Installation view, Alex Hartley: 'Closer Than Before' 22 April – 17 June 2023, Victoria Miro Venice
Three artworks in marble present alternative portals, each transformed into a vivid theatre flat with a box-style inlay revealing photographs of Scarpa’s designs that have been layered and painted over. Excavation rather than creation becomes the focus, Hartley cutting the slabs with bolt cutters to create the illusion of the natural rugged edge of stone. ‘There was this misremembered Bjork song, “everything in the world has already been invented and it lives inside this mountain and it's just waiting to come out”, and for some reason that had been going around in my head while I was making, this idea that all this stuff is already there,’ Hartley says. ‘It’s embarrassing to talk about sci-fi, but I wanted some of that to come out of it, that it might be a link to another world.’
Curiosity is essential: ‘That question, “What's happened here?” is the thing that I like,’ he says. ‘I always hope I can surprise people and then drive people from one work to another to try and forge connections. I think that the most as an artist you can really ask for is that you cause people to stop, to question, to try and imagine.’
Installation view, Alex Hartley: ‘Closer Than Before’, 22 April – 17 June 2023, Victoria Miro Venice
Alex Hartley: 'Closer Than Before', until 17 June 2023, Victoria Miro, Venice. victoria-miro.com
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
‘Personal Structures’ in Venice is about ‘artists breaking free’
‘Personal Structures 2024: Beyond Boundaries’ reveals a rich tapestry of perspectives on the challenges of our time, from culture to climate and identity
By Nargess Banks Published
-
Kapwani Kiwanga considers value and commerce for the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024
Kapwani Kiwanga draws on her experiences in materiality for the Canada Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale
By Hannah Silver Published
-
What’s the big deal with breasts, ask artists at the Venice Biennale
‘Breasts’ is set to open at ACP Palazzo Franchetti for the duration of the Venice Art Biennale 2024
By Hannah Silver Published
-
‘Darker, more sinister themes’: Paula Rego’s decade of self-discovery is the subject of a new London exhibition
Paula Rego’s ‘Letting Loose’, at Victoria Miro in London, considers the artist’s work from the 1980s
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Art, science, and activism coalesce in ‘Thus waves come in pairs’ at Ocean Space, Venice
‘Thus waves come in pairs’, an exhibition of two new commissions at Ocean Space in Venice, features potent work by Simone Fattal, and artist duo Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano
By Will Jennings Published
-
Fondazione Prada exhibition is an ode to a vanishing Venice
At Fondazione Prada’s 18th-century Venice palazzo, group exhibition ‘Everybody Talks About the Weather’ straddles beauty and fear and probes Venice’s precarious environmental future
By Will Jennings Published
-
Adriano Pedrosa announced as curator of the 2024 Venice Biennale
Adriano Pedrosa has been announced as the curator of the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, becoming the first Latin American to spearhead the event
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Venice Biennale 2022 closing review: who, how and what on earth?
As the sun sets on the 59th Venice Art Biennale (until 27 November), we look back on an edition filled with resilience, female power and unsurprisingly, lots of surprises
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published