Protocolli Veneziani I

Muntadas’ art projects primarily focus on the problems of actual socio-political topics, on investigating the relations between public and private spaces. His complex installations, set by photos and videos, always based on an interdisciplinary and criticical research.

Protocolli Veneziani was shown in this years’colateral Venice Biennale’s program in Galeria Michela Rizzo at Palazzo Palumbo Fossatti in Venice, and now the exhibition is adapted to the Erika Deák Gallery.

His work develops on two levels: perception and information, where the former acts on an emotive level and the latter stimulates reasoning.

In his exhibition, Muntadas observes Venice and draws attention to the forms, which he identifies as Venetian Protocols. Protocols are understood as, citing Angela Vettese “practical behaviours, repair systems, ritualized technical combinations and habits thatmaterialize in a series of architectural accretions.”

Operating from a personal perspective, the artist sheds light upon the dynamics of living in the Lagoon today. Protocols that become essential, reinventing themselves and adapting to the passing of time.

Protocolli Veneziani I, the first phase of a project on Venice, is composed of a collection of images in which the artist reveals the norms that regulate life in the city, creating a framework in which the inhabitants develop their respective existences. Muntadas considers these rules to be shadows and indispensable reflections of the history of Venice, which materialize in vestiges, traces and signs – aesthetics of a particular architecture.

The underlying ambition of the project is to reveal the quotidian side of the city hidden from the eyes of the tourist, deconstructing and dismantling reality, replacing it with fragments or clues. What emerges is an image of a city marke by the paradox of a local culture that has been subjected to a process of internationalization, which inevitably impacts the evolution of its protocols.