Anselm Kiefer, Das Salz der Erde, 2011

From 1st June to 30th November, the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova will be presenting Salt of the Earth by Anselm Kiefer, one of the most important contemporary artists, who has produced an installation especially for the Magazzino del Sale, the space restored by Renzo Piano for the Fondazione.
Exploring the work of Anselm Kiefer means tackling the problem of purification, both as regards the past of Germany, and with respect to the individual living in the present.
Kiefer recreated the space of the Magazzino in his enormous studio at Croissy on a 1:1 scale.  According to Kiefer, in order to awaken from his past, a human being must go through various stages of mutation and art is the tool for facilitating this step and this rebirth towards a new awareness of the world. For this reason, the artist in his paintings and sculptures resorts to symbolic materials and processes, such as lead and electrolysis, gold and salt. With these materials, the artist has developed a continuous mystery-based depiction, in which the work becomes a tool for gaining access to the higher zones of consciousness, where the weight of raw, heavy matter, lead, is submitted to the fire of creation and is transformed, conveying a light, golden sense: an alchemical transition from the impure to the pure.
In Kiefer’s work at the Magazzino del Sale the polarity between dissolution and sublimation finds a single point of equilibrium in a spatial and architectural group entitled Das Salz der Erde, 2011, consisting of a structure in which are hung photographs of landscapes on sheets of lead submitted to a process of electrolysis that has covered them in a green patina: a colour underlying hope and announcing the union of opposites. The space in the Magazzino will be symbolically closed by the image of the initiatory triangle above the large painting of Arche, 2011.
The installation by Kiefer is also a reflection of places crossed, here the old Venetian salt storage built in the XV Century, full of the same memories and saline and mutating experiences, formed of a further metaphor of art as a continuous active force, a step towards the possible constellations of knowing oneself.

installation of Salt of the Earth exhibition at Fondazione Vedova Venice

The exhibition runs in parallel to the Venice Biennale until November 30th.
For more information visit:  www.fondazionevedova.org

Published 31.05.2011