If you have been visiting art galleries for some time, you will have noticed how rare, extremely rare, it is to come across exhibitions that embody absolute poetry. For quite some time now, I personally hadn’t encountered anything as profoundly poetic as the solo exhibition I’m about to tell you about.In the heart of Venice, within the aged marble walls of a former butcher shop, Marco Godinho, an artist nomadic by vocation and a poet by nature, invites the audience to an experience that goes beyond the visual. His La mer Le vent Le vent La mer Le sud Encore Le sud Encore Le temps Encore Encore Le vent (…), hosted at the 10 & zero uno gallery, is a celebration of travel, exile, and a deep connection with the sea.
Marco Godinho, “La mer Le vent Le vent La mer Le sud Encore”. 10 & zero uno Ph. by Filippo Molena
The gallery, located at 1830 Via Garibaldi, transforms into a crossroads between time and space, a place where fragments of memory intersect with the fragility of matter. Godinho, who represented Luxembourg at the 2019 Venice Biennale, returns to the lagoon city with a work that merges poetry, performance, and installation. The very title, almost a mantra, opens the door to a polyphonic narrative: inside, the walls come alive with verses written in pencil, creating a dialogue between the poem The Sea, The Wind… and the photographs from Left to Their Own Fate (Odyssey), a project where the artist and his brother crossed the Mediterranean while silently reading the entire Odyssey by Homer. Each image, each word is an echo reflected within the gallery space, a world suspended between the intimate and the universal.
Marco Godinho, “La mer Le vent Le vent La mer Le sud Encore”. 10 & zero uno. Installation view. Ph. by Filippo Molena
In the blue room, a box-book becomes a meditative pause. Here, visitors encounter the work Written by Water, a limited-edition artist’s book. With this installation, Godinho doesn’t merely exhibit: he invites the viewer to participate, allowing them to take away a fragment of the poem as a memory and perhaps as a tangible sign of transformation. Born in Salvaterra de Magos, Portugal, and raised between Luxembourg and Paris, Godinho defines himself as a “nomadic traveler.” His work, influenced by literature and philosophy, delves into themes of exile, migration, and cultural geography. Combining elements of the everyday with fragments of language, he traces maps of the world that are both intimate and universal, inviting us to rethink our relationship with time and space.
Marco Godinho, Limited edition artist’s book, “Left to Their Own Fate (Odyssey) & See Another Sea”, 2019-2024. 44 colour photographs, poem, time (201 days), set of 101 postcards, wooden postcard holder, wooden shelf, daaily performative gesture
La mer Le vent… is not just an exhibition but a perfect poem balancing the fluid boundaries of culture and nature, words and matter. Like a modern epic poem, each of Godinho’s gestures seems to embody both resistance and surrender: resistance to rigid categorizations and surrender to the unstable beauty of encounter. Godinho reminds us that art, like life, is a journey in progress, an open sea where the wind can be an obstacle or an ally, and every landing is just the beginning of a new route.
Francesco Liggieri
Info:
Marco Godinho. La mer Le vent Le vent La mer Le sud Encore Le sud Encore Le temps Encore Encore Le vent (…)
Curated by Chiara Boscolo, Claire e Paul di Felice
16/11/ 2024 – 12/01/2025
10 & zero uno, via Garibaldi 1830, Venice
www.10zerouno.com
Independent artist and curator. Founder of No Title Gallery in 2011. I observe, study, ask questions, take informations and live in contemporary art, a real stimulus for my research.
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