Future Tense / Past Tensions

A Proposal for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

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Artist Statement

Future Tense/Past Tensions originated in a partnership between American artist Deanna Sirlin and Venetian architect Monica Trevisan formed to create a three-dimensional painting using the new technology Sirlin had developed for earlier installations. Sirlin’s installations translate painting into architecturally scaled, site-specific works of intense, transparent color that reflect on the places for which they were made. Together, Sirlin and Trevisan explored the possibilities for designing a free standing structure and a painting installation made specifically for one another.

Well-known Italian composer Giuseppe Gavazza soon joined Trevisan and Sirlin. His sound composition would add to the dimensionality and content of the work. Gavazza had previously collaborated with Sirlin on a fountain installation in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA where his sound added significantly to the experience of the work. The three artists, representing the disciplines of music, painting and architecture, have come together in the collaborative group MAP3.

The joint project developed from consideration of the meaning that an installation could have in a very specific place: the terrace roof of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, home to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection collection. The main idea of Future Tense/Past Tensions is the bond between time and place. Mixing the thematic junctures of present/future tenses and past/future tensions, the installation will interpret these temporal dimensions in space, sound, and color in a way that fuses the three artists' different memories and experiences. Each will draw from the aspects of the Venice Guggenheim Collection that are especially significant to them. They will map their relationships to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in their respective disciplines, coming together to articulate ideas about time and space in relation to each other.

The temporal relationships underlying Future Tense/Past Tensions will be expressed in a double structure unified by a central connecting aisle. Ribs of wood or aluminum define the main structure. Trevisan has designed her structural form to the existing plan of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. She has used the proportions and divisions first designed by Lorenzo Boschetti in 1749. All of the installation's dimensions and proportions are based on the building's proportions and modularity. The spaces are as tall as the floor below. Metallic frames for transparent panels made of polycarbonate (or a similar material) will be mounted on the ribs.

Sirlin's paintings, printed onto film, will be placed on these frames creating a three-dimensional painting the viewer may enter. Sirlin will make new paintings that reflect on the art in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. These paintings will sample the color, ideas, and compositions of significant works in the collection. Through a unique digital process, images from the paintings will be magnified by a factor of 30, printed on a transparent film, and stretched like a skin on Trevisan's structure. This technique allows the viewer to see all the aspects of painting that are not usually seen: the specific texture of each brushstroke, the way in which every brushstroke has been realized. A thousand individual gestures are discovered and an area that appears to be uniformly colored is revealed to contain multiple tonalities. The image, born as a reproduction of the painting, paradoxically becomes something independent and completely different from the original.

Gavazza’s sound installation will surround and include the viewer in a mix of manipulated, live and recorded sounds from the Grand Canal and Venice, the artists, and the viewers themselves.

The installation will be situated on the roof of the building. This U-shaped space has a single access from the eastern side by means of a metal staircase. From the canal, the building creates a strong impression of horizontality. The conformation of the terrace and its unique access have led the artists to think of an installation that will define a path with a logic of its own that will lead spectators to a view of the surroundings (San Marco Square, the Salute Basilica, the Grand Canal, etc.) from an exclusive point of observation, as from the bow of a ship.

This path would run through three different spaces. The first one is very intimate, almost closed, and it is the space of the Past Tense. The sounds are heavy, earthy, dark, somber, and rich in low frequencies. In each of the three corners the voice of one of the three artists (Deanna Sirlin, Monica Trevisan, and Giuseppe Gavazza) will tell the story of their lives will tell the story of their lives using fragments of personal memories. As this is both a visual and aural project, the personal life stories will be told through the memories of the other senses (taste, smell and touch). The voices will be manipulated electronically to create a three-voice score without impairing the intelligibility of the words.

From the space of Past Tense, the visitor passes into a partially open aisle or corridor: this is the Present Tense. Sounds recorded live from the Grand Canal will be manipulated in real time, subjected to a variety of different spatial resonances which will change continually (from the resonance of a cathedral, to that of a well, to that of a large valley, to that of a small room, to that of a square, a field, a narrow alleyway). The sounds are real, everyday sounds, rich in mid-range frequencies. The movement of the sounds in the Corridor will reflect the non-periodic and open-ended, erratic linearity of the passageway.

From this point, the visitor would arrive at an open structure: the space of the Future Tense, the Terrace. Sounds, pure, electronic, abstract, will move around a network of speakers in a crisscrossing, dizzy movement recalling both the colored figures painted on the transparent surfaces and the flight patterns of the swallows above the city. The movement of these sounds on the Terrace will reflect the whirl of ideas and dreams.

Giuseppe Gavazza, Deanna Sirlin, Monica Trevisan

Background

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the site of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice was commissioned by the Venier Venetian family from the architect Lorenzo Boschetti, who, in the year 1749, presented a project of which the wooden model is still visible at the Correr Museum. The model shows an impressive construction with two noble floors over two other mezzanine floors and, at the top, another floor below the roof. Of this entire project only the basement and the first mezzanine were built; it is not known why construction was never completed.

The palace Venier dei Leoni is located along the Grand Canal, near where it flows past the Salute Basilica, Longhena's architectural masterpiece that faces San Marco Square. Two minor buildings stand beside the Venier palace, and near it is Cà Dario, a palace built at the time of Caravaggio, which could be considered a good example of the architecture he typically painted.

Venice has always been a wonderful stage for any sort of art. The painted images from Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini in the second half of the fifteenth century show how everyone could be simultaneously an actor and spectator, how every building was both architecture and set design. The facades of the palaces show a deep concern with communicating, through an architectural language, the magnificence of the dwelling and of its owner. The multiple colors of marble, still visible, and the frescos, all unfortunately lost, were selected for this purpose.

Venice is unique, to be sure, and it expresses a distinctive relationship between that which is constructed (the buildings) and that which is natural. But every city has a relationship with the surrounding nature against which it defines itself. Every citizen is a spectator at a play in which he or she is also an actor; his or her home is a cultural expression of this drama. The city itself becomes the best stage for the artistic productions that are the most important form of expression of a specific socio-cultural environment.