After two days of dramatic deluges throughout the opening days of the Venice Biennale, the skies cleared, the solar shone and on Thursday (7 Might) Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo welcomed guests to San Giacomo, the lagoon island she and her husband purchased in 2018 and have transformed right into a venue for artwork, creation and sustainability.
Tiny, resplendent in a brilliant lime-green coat and costume, Sandretto tirelessly shook arms with tons of of tourists, from the main collector Sheikha Al-Mayassa Al Thani of Qatar to different famous invitees corresponding to vogue maven Diane von Furstenberg, philanthropist Maja Hoffmann and curator Julia Peyton-Jones. Sandretto’s long-time curator Hans Ulrich Obrist was there: he had organised Fanfare/Lament, a solo exhibition by Matt Copson, in one of many former munitions storehouses on the island, now transformed into exhibition areas.
The opposite exhibition house is displaying picks from the Sandretto assortment, together with works by artists corresponding to Michael Armitage (on present on the Palazzo Grassi throughout the Biennale), Sarah Lucas, Victor Man and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Outdoors site-specific works are put in, together with a stunning pink tree by Pamela Rosenkranz [Old Tree (Pink Seas) 2026] overlooking the lagoon, and a piece by Claire Fontaine known as Patriarchy = CO2 (2020). There’s additionally Hugh Hayden’s Huff and a Puff (2026), an unsettling small chapel slanted ahead by 40 levels.
Hugh Hayden’s Huff and a Puff (2026) Courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Picture: Jacopo Trabuio
Beside it’s a silvery house rocket, Gonogo (2023), apparently able to take off, by the Polish-born artist Goshka Macuga. On the preview day, airborne sculptures within the type of kites with disembodied eyes fluttered overhead, staring down on the crowd, as a part of the Copson present. An orchestra performed a fanfare of music composed by Oliver Leith.
“That is the place of goals, of a daydream come true,” Sandretto mentioned on the inauguration. She was surrounded by among the artists who had works on present, from Copson to Fulvia Carnevale of the duo Claire Fontaine and Hugh Hayden. “Supporting artists and their creations has at all times been on the core of the Sandretto Basis’s mission,” she mentioned.
The positioning types the third everlasting house for the inspiration. It joins the Turin headquarters, opened in 2002 in a former industrial space of the town, and the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, which has an artwork park within the hills of San Licerio in Piedmont.
The island has a protracted historical past, going again a minimum of 1,000 years. It has over the centuries been a monastery, a stopping level for travelling pilgrims, a winery, a vegetable backyard and at last a navy website; throughout the Napoleonic period the storehouses served as powder magazines. Sandretto’s challenge on this land is self-sustaining, she continued, explaining that her husband Agostino’s firm Asja, which specialises in renewable power, is a big participant within the challenge.
Apparently, San Giacomo is a singular instance in Italy of the connection between biomuseology—the intersection between biology and museum research—and conservation.
Sandretto and her household have homes on the island: her son Eugenio mentioned laughingly that the solar got here out simply in time for the inauguration: “As a result of we constructed a chapel!”—referring to the constructing by Hayden. Entry to the exhibitions is free, though initially solely throughout biennales or for guided excursions. Nonetheless, there’s a plan to offer an on-request cease at San Giacomo on the 12 vaporetto line.
