New branch in Venice’s museum mile
March 27, 2023
Patricia Low Contemporary announces the opening of a new gallery in Venice in April 2023, to operate alongside the Gstaad mainstay.
Established in the Swiss resort in 2005, Patricia Low Venezia will host exhibitions by members of her program of international artists in the heart of Venice’s museum district, Dorsoduro. Adjacent to the Ca’ Rezzonico museum of 18th-century Venice and directly across from Palazzo Grassi, Patricia Low Venezia will open in the 16th-century Palazzo Contarini Michiel on April 1, 2023, with a solo exhibition by American artist Amy Bessone.
With over two decades staging exhibitions by artists at pivotal points in their careers, from Maurizio Cattelan to Jonathan Meese, and, most recently, Gilbert & George among many others, Patricia Low has been instrumental in putting Gstaad on the global contemporary art map. Now preparing to make her contribution to Venice’s contemporary art scene, the new gallery is sited in Dorsoduro’s Museum Mile, among such vital and storied spaces as the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Palazzo Cini Gallery, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana.
Patricia Low plans for complementary, year-long programming across Venice and Gstaad. The Venice space will open on April 1 with an exhibition by American artist Amy Bessone, titled Our Secret Garden. The exhibition comprises an array of paintings and a sculptural work that picture archetypal figures, either alone or in groups, in obscure environments. Referencing multiple art-historical and architectural sources, yet reconfigured into ambiguous, dream-like settings, and executed in an intense, almost digital palette, the paintings combine a sense of the ethereal with the hyperreal. The secret garden that Bessone imagines, with its lush foliage, alcoves and abundant bodies, is a cloistered, female-centric world.
Bessone was born in New York in 1970 and lives and works in Los Angeles. Educated in the US and Europe—at Barnard College, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Parsons Paris School of Design, and De Ateliers, Amsterdam—her multidisciplinary practice combines paintings, ceramics, bronze, and prints. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows internationally, notably with Salon 94 and David Kordansky Gallery, as well as The Pit, Los Angeles; Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Her work is held in the collections of the latter as well as MOCA, LA, and those of Frac Bretagne in France, the Saatchi Collection, London, and the Rennie Collection, Vancouver.
Our Secret Garden will be followed by a solo show of exuberant, pop-influenced sculptures and paintings by British artist Philip Colbert to coincide with the opening of the Architecture Biennale.
For press inquiries: claudia [at] mayvenice.com / website.