MAPPING THE STUDIO

The exhibition "Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection" is curated by Alison Gingeras and Francesco Bonami, and includes two hundred works by sixty artists, which fill the spaces of Palazzo Grassi and the newly renovated exhibition space at Punta della Dogana, which has recently reopened following its renovation by Tadao Ando.

Mapping the Studio derives from the title of a video installation by Bruce Nauman, in which the artist recorded his studio at night, offering viewers an unedited glimpse of the symbolic space in which the creative process unfolds. It is no accident that the curators should have chosen "Mapping the Studio" as the exhibition title: the artist’s studio is a sacred space and "Mapping the Studio" aims to foreground the energy that animates various approaches to artistic creation, tracing the infinite changes that take place in the artist’s private universe.

Through the curators’ selection of works, the exhibition reconstructs the development of a work of art over the course of its journey, from the artist’s intimate sphere to a private collection and finally the exhibition space. Their own expressive forms, developments and geography aside, the works in the exhibition present an extended cartography of the Pinault collection: masterpieces by major contemporary artists active over the last forty years are displayed alongside works by emerging talents and figures who have been unjustly neglected by the international art world.