Lucio Salvatore at the 53rd Venice Biennale
Lucio Salvatore’s Installation for the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Location: C.A.V. North side of Venice Arsenal
Description: One 328 ft (100mt) tall Crane, and a 262 ft (80mt) tall sculpture.
The Installation is the biggest artwork ever built in Venice.
The Crane is the tallest construction in Venice, in the heart of the Arsenal Shipyards – Having been out of operations since many years, it is an example of Venice’s industrial archeology that soon will disappear.
In fact, together with the Arsenal Shipyards, it will be dismissed in 2010 to be replaced by the facilities for the maintenance of the Mose (the system that is being built for the safeguard of Venice from high waters).
This is the first artwork ever designed in the North side of Venice Arsenal, and, because of the shipyards conversion, it will also be the last one.
The sculpture that completes the installation consists in an iron structure hung from the Crane and completely wrapped in red Polyethylene stretch film.
The sculpture is composed by a head – with human features slightly visible through the plastic wraps – and a body, represented with a geometric figure, a spiral, that rotates like a wind vertical turbine.
The Installation was thought to value culturally the North side of the Arsenal, the city Shipyards, that is symbol of the Venice’s four centuries maritime power, and is the only factory still operating in the heart of town.
The sculpture intends to attract the attention on what is under the eyes of thousands of people everyday, the gate of Venice – coming from the airport the shipyard are the first corner of Venice that people can see – that is usually considered an insignificant location.
On the contrary the artist sees the beauty of Venice beginning from its dirtiest corner: the abandoned Crane becomes no less important than Venice’s beautiful palaces, a piece of art by itself that for years, until its end, has been ignored.
