VENICE.- After 20,500 visitors and a shared aperçu in international media citing In-finitum exhibition as one of the not-to-be-missed events in Venice, this exhibition conceived by the Vervoordt Foundation and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and set in the understated but exquisite Palazzo Fortuny, home of fin-de-siècle theatre, photography, and textile genius Mariano Fortuny, continues to capture the imagination. A play on “the infinite in the finite,” the indefinite, and the unfinished, In-finitum exhibits nearly 300 works of art, among which many video and photographic works, juxtaposed with old and modern masters as well as archaeological artefacts. Exhibited artists include Picasso, Rothko, Viola, Miró, Twombly, Fontana and Kapoor. The exhibition will remain open until 15 November.

In-finitum is a journey stretched out over the four floors of the Palazzo Fortuny, and reaches its zenith in the never-before-exposed attic of Palazzo Fortuny where an undisturbed 360° view on Venice offers a splendid panorama. Here the Sanctuary of Silence, a pavilion created by Tatsuro Miki and Axel Vervoordt with found objects and covered in the mud of the Venetian lagoon exists in the spirit of Wabi, a respect of ‘as-it-is-ness’. In-finitum is created around concepts which evoke a sense of the infinite such as the cosmos, the infinite perspective and the monochrome.

Highlights among the exhibited video work feature Bodies of Light (2006) by Bill Viola; Rosso by Grazia Toderi (2007); Angel Vergara’s Journey into Infinity (2009); John Gerrard’s Sentry (Kit Carson, Colorado) (2008); Blue Cyan Green Suns by Diana Thater (2000); and Havana (2007) by Kimsooja. Photographic works on display include Duane Michals’ The Human Condition (1969); For Allegra (2009), a daguerreotype by Adam Fuss made especially for In-finitum and based upon three negatives (unfinished) of the Taj Mahal by John Murray from 1864; a photograph by Bien-U-Bae and Seascape (2002) by Hiroshi Sugimoto. From the extensive collection of photographs made and collected by Mariano Fortuny, several will also be shown during the exhibition.

Special attention is lavished upon James Turrell’s, Red Shift, 1995, an installation in which Turrell investigates forms of light and space that affect the eye, mind and body by offering the viewer a purely space-distorted and timeless experience.

Blue chip old, modern and contemporary masters of painting and sculpture are abundantly present and include Guenther Uecker’s Weisses Phantom (White Phantom) (1995); Glow (2009) by Anish Kapoor; a unique series of six Concetto Spaziale Natura sculptures by Lucio Fontana; Alberto Giacometti’s slender, gracious Dame de Venise (1956); Ad Reinhardt’s fabulous black monochrome, Abstract Work (1959); Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Gray, Gray on Red) (1968); La Vie sans l’homme (1960) by Dubuffet; the Fibonacci suite (2002) by Mario Merz; Enmaten (1983) by Kazuo Shiraga ;a group of six of Piero Manzoni’s Linee finite and two Linee infinite; and the installation Untitled (originally from 1967-68) which Jannis Kounellis especially re-created for In-finitum.