Data / Ora
Date(s) - 20/11/2025 - 21/12/2025
11:00 am - 7:00 pm
Luogo
Castello 2432
Categorie
In Medio Lagunae marks the first solo exhibition of Italian artist, researcher, and architect Riccardo Rizzetto in Venice. Deeply rooted in the history and geography of the Venetian Lagoon, the exhibition unfolds as a poetic and critical exploration of landscape, memory, and ecological fragility. Taking the Purple artichoke of Sant’Erasmo as both metaphor and medium, Rizzetto transforms this emblematic vegetable into a transmitter of layered voices, invoking the echoes of agricultural labour, the residues of colonial trade, and the spectres of environmental precarity. Treated as a “quasi-object” in Michel Serres’ sense, the artichoke becomes an entry point for dialogues between the human and the non-human, the local and the global, the past and the emergent present.
A site-specific installation titled Synthetic Campi grounds the show on synthetic grass (a tangible innuendo of the artificial flirting with the natural), setting the scene for a constellation of sculptures, ready-mades, photographs, paintings, and soil chromatographies. The works presented in the exhibition extend Rizzetto’s ongoing research project Eroded Ecologies, which was initiated at the Centre for Research Architecture (Goldsmiths, University of London). It investigates anthropic impact on bodies of water and situates the Venetian Lagoon within a wider network of haunted ecologies; spaces where infrastructure, extraction, and colonial circulation leave traces that are at times invisible yet always enduring.
This research forms the basis for the creation of new works, such as Souvenir Lagunae which presents a set of postcards addressed to Venice, to be sent back in time to the 20th century, an era that brought major shifts to the city’s industry and demographics. They are accompanied by Extractive Icons, a series of paintings on metal plates which emulate traces found in the lagoon, as well as Membrana Lagunae, images printed on translucent film which turn the gallery’s windows into porous membranes where the lagoon’s textures filter light and reflection. The work mirrors the lagoon’s own instability, suspended between exposure and concealment, visibility and opacity.
The exhibition also features a series of Soil Chromatographies which unfold as geological portraits. They are slow images of transformation that register the invisible chemistries of displacement, tracing how Sant’Erasmo’s fertile grounds and Porto Marghera’s industrial residues converge, together with the traces of overtourism in Venice, within the sedimented memory of the lagoon. Hydraulic Mythologies revisits the entanglement of extraction and circulation that underpinned Venice’s construction. Transported from Bassano del Grappa along the river routes that once carried timber to the lagoon, the reclaimed trunk becomes a material echo of the hydraulic systems and forested origins that sustained the city’s foundations.
Through poetic narration, atmospheric imagery, and spatial interventions, Rizzetto presents a counter mapping of the Venetian lagoon, tracing its factual histories and contemporary myths. His work disturbs still waters, inviting the audience to sense how the past continues to inhabit the present, and how landscapes themselves may speak back through haunting. With a gaze that is at once analytical and lyrical, Riccardo Rizzetto offers a meditation on the Lagoon as a living archive, a site where ecological, historical, and affective dimensions converge. In Medio Lagunae invites the audience to listen differently: to perceive the landscape not as backdrop or as a resource, but as a resonant body, alive with memory, tension, and possibility.
Exhibition co-curated by Nikolaos Akritidis and Yasmine Helou
With the support of Quintopasso Metodo Classico
For more information and high resolution images email hey@yasminehelou.com
Preview: 19.11.2025 | 6.30 – 9pm
Listening Session: 23.11.2025
Exhibition dates: 20.11 – 21.12.2025
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday | 11am – 6pm
Location: Castello 2432, Fondamenta dei Penini, Venezia 30122
Social media handles: @yasmine.helou @nakriditis @riccardorizzetto_studio
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