Laura de Santillana and Kikuo Saito:
Floating / Gathering

Upper Gallery
Open by appointment

Exhibition Catalogue

Kikuo Saito and Laura de Santillana shared a love of Japanese aesthetics. Saito was born in Tokyo in 1939 and moved to New York in 1966, where he worked as a painter and performer. De Santillana was born in 1955 in Venice and had a lifelong fascination with the meditative quality of Kyoto, the films of Ozu, and the neon lights of Tokyo. This is the first time the two artists have been exhibited together.

"The marks in [Saito's] paintings, now floating, now gathering in conversational groups.. have become eloquent signs, carriers not only of the complex colors with which Saito builds his paintings, but also of deep feeling and energy."
Karen Wilkin

"[Saito's work reminds me of] looking at the ocean... He painted an ocean, very quickly, and [spent] forever trying to figure out what part of it to look at."
Joshua Cohen

"I love to go to Murano at six AM by boat, in the morning light... My work is about refracted light, low water and the horizon line."
Laura de Santillana

"I always wanted to paint with drawing."
Kikuo Saito

"The first [Flag] sculptures reminded me of canvases... I cannot imagine doing anything more painterly than with glass."
Laura de Santillana

"When illuminated, [de Santillana's sculptures] metamorphose. With every viewer’s movement, radiant edges, emerging colors, and shimmering surfaces burst forth."
Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia

"Kikuo Saito had two métiers, as an abstract painter and as a creator of experimental theater performances... These polarities can also be seen clearly in his paintings."
John Dorfman

"It starts with the breath. I like working with glass because you put air—your breath—inside the material and you close it inside. It’s the moment between inhaling and exhaling... The accidents are written inside the piece."
Laura de Santillana

Francesco Polenghi and Massimo Micheluzzi: Invisible Breath

Lower Gallery
Open by appointment

Exhibition Catalogue

We're pleased to present the work of Francesco Polenghi and Massimo Micheluzzi, exhibited together for the first time. Living and working in Milan, Polenghi painted while reciting a mantra he learned after spending much of the 1980s living in an ashram in India. Massimo Micheluzzi lives and works in Venice, where he continues the centuries-old tradition of Murano glassblowing. Micheluzzi re-imagines the repetitive patterns of the floors in St. Mark's Basilica and the waves in Venice's canals.

Both artists arrive at a type of hypnotic patterning in their respective mediums, which Barry Schwabsky described as a form of abstraction with "no figure, no ground... just this incessant bustle of matter set in motion by an invisible breath."

“Polenghi remains very much an artist yet to be discovered.”
Barry Schwabsky, Artforum

“My father believed that your time on this planet is not important—it’s about transcending to a higher plane of existence.”
Dara Polenghi

“Massimo's work is really deeply Venetian, well and truly rooted in the history, the shapes, and the forms of this unique city.”
Viretta Micheluzzi

“Those simple, sculptural forms with their deeply ground incisions seemed to me to be closely connected to [Venice] itself. They recalled the patterns made in the water by boats as they move through the canals.”
Barry Friedman

Beverly Pepper / Outdoor Sculpture

Currently on view by appointment only

“Time, that fourth dimension, has always been an essential element in [Beverly] Pepper’s work—a desire to create something outside history, something bigger and more enduring than herself, than all of us.”

Megan O’Grady

Clodia Medea (2014 - 2024)

Exhibition Catalogue

Curvae in Curvae (2012 - 18)

Exhibition Catalogue

Curved Presence (2012)

Exhibition Catalogue