Peru - ANA MARIA REQUE

The project began in November 2010. I was walking past Punta della Dogana, it was dusk and only then did I notice the different textures of the walls of that building, without thinking of the degradation of the brick facing due to rising damp; I admired the beauty of that wall of worn bricks of an orange-red colour that rejected its outer covering of Istria stone and revealed itself to everyone as the real structural support.

Exposed Venetian bricks have become a fundamental element of contextual architecture… They are an expression of the local identity, I think they are one of the messages that the historic city wants to transmit, and that, for certain Venetian wall coverings, restoration and reintegration with a covering of Istria stone is not necessary. For me, seeing Venetian walls with different eyes began on that afternoon in the winter light... The image was transformed into an environmental sculpture.

No artistic or architectural work should be seen as an end in itself, but as an instrument for communicating and relating to its context. Finestra Temporale (Window in Time) aims to recall the old construction systems of the different periods of the architecture of Venetian civil buildings, in a space of time from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance; when at the end of the fourteenth century the Gothic school ousted the Byzantine, and how the Roman Renaissance was then imposed on Gothic tradition, and that was the period when Venice changed colour and the brick walls were covered with slabs of Istria stone and marble… The city lost its colours and became white, but the Venetian Gothic bricks and their internal energy have to breathe, and they reveal themselves as the real structural support and the body of the building.

The semicircular central composition with glass fragments aims to suggest the idea of time travel. The fragments represent the three commonly perceived dimensions in space and a fourth dimension, space-time. The window in time is lit up by day thanks to its mirrored surface which represents the Venetian lagoon and by night thanks to the electrical installation and the Moonlight.

Text by the artist