I NEEDED NO ENCOURAGEMENT to return to Venice, as it has emerged as my number one escapist fantasy destination in recent years. I arrived the night before Gallery Weekend in late March and was so happy that I suddenly thought of a Biennale curator—an organizer of a national pavilion some years back—who, perhaps a bit overfond of the tipple, had ecstatically thrown himself into the Grand Canal. (Once he was in, he told me later, his immediate thought was: “Now how the hell am I ever going to get out?”) While I was able to exercise a bit more restraint, the question that preoccupied me, as always, is how to write Venice when Venice has already written itself over and over again throughout the centuries, its entire surface comprising a dense and beautifully inscrutable tale that seduces with its invitation to interpretation, then takes perverse delight in slamming its heavy wooden doors in your face?
Perhaps it’s the masochistic streak in me, but it’s a challenge I can never shy away from, no matter how hard I fail. Or else: I’m just a slut who loves to be seduced. There I was, displaying myself shamelessly in the middle of Campo Santo Stefano on the third Friday of March, the eve of Gallery Weekend. From the periphery, a figure in a beautiful long green coat suddenly came running toward me: my pal Noa Pane, artist extraordinaire, who had inducted me into the joys of Venice many years ago via her Office of the Imaginary. The Office is no longer—at least in the form of a garret in Dorsoduro that had hosted so many misfit artists and writers over the years—though plans are underway to resurrect it in mobile format, as part of a Ph.D. she is undertaking at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice. Anything Noa touches is magical; her work is fairly rooted in a deeply felt aesthetic appreciation for the architectural wonders of her adopted city and a quasi-anarchist DIY approach that is the natural culmination of a nomadic existence. She is rigidly independent yet selflessly generous, and I’m happy to have her as my guide for this opening night.
Our first stop: La Galleria Dorothea Van Der Koelen, playing host to a small but tasteful grouping of Lore Bert’s works on paper. Bert herself, eighty-nine years young, presided gallantly over the buzzy proceedings from her seat next to the gallerist’s desk, while Van Der Koelen showed off a selection of the artist’s more than one hundred monographs and artist’s books. As temping as the prospect of lingering sounded, time wasn’t on our side—nor was the assistance of public transportation, as a one-day vaporetto strike had slowed the waves of the Grand Canal, guaranteeing all Gallery Weekenders a night of cardio to walk off all those cicchetti and glasses of prosecco. We crossed the bridge at Accademia to the Dorsoduro side, trespassing the maze of alleys behind the Peggy Guggenheim Collection to arrive at Marignana Arte, whose group show “Apparizioni. Il sogno dell’infinità” (Apparitions: The Dream of the Infinite) had just opened. There, we fell into conversation with the Russian Italian artist Olga Lepri, who was showing two deconstructed figurative paintings from her “Etereo” (Ethereal) series, 2022–. “My work focuses on the idea of blindness,” she told us, forming a neat corollary to the exhibition’s theme of transcending the limitations of the visible world.
Marignana’s project space next door featured a show by Violaine Vieillefond. It was too early for us to be aware of it, but Vieillefond’s work—paintings, photos, and videos of (mostly) lush greenery—would forge the other great theme that predominated throughout gallery weekend: the natural, often botanical world.
I stepped outside to find Noa installing one of her inflatables in an architectural crevice on the corner above a former well turned flower-pot. Noa has been staging these temporary sculptural interventions throughout her adopted city for several years; spotting one is always fun. She was having difficulty blowing up the balloon and twisting it into shape. “It’s because you’re watching me!” she shrieked with laughter. “Go away!” So I went and gazed above at the wide open, which was just on the verge of its mutinous descent into night, and jotted down a haiku:
sloven engulfer, sky;
the word fat does not apply
to a void so high
Later we came to Patricia Low, where the très gay paintings of Luke Edward Hall had attracted quite the crowd. The artist’s ethereal figurative oils were inspired by Pan, the Greek god of the wilderness, sex, and spring who tempts all he encounters. Again, any dispensation to linger among these haunting images is unsettled by the night’s agenda: a daunting forty-five-minute walk to reach the gallery 10 & zero uno, situated near the Giardini.
As much as my feet hate me, it turns out to be well worth the while: Anna Bochkova and Andrea Luzi’s two-person show at 10 & zero uno’s tiny storefront space was the highlight of the evening. Luzi’s wild, neo-Boschian paintings seem to have issued forth from the pages of some Aleister Crowley treatise. They complemented Bochkova’s creaturely ceramics, leaving us with plenty of material to fuel our dreams in preparation for Saturday’s daylong marathon.
It began in the late morning on the island of Giudecca—thankfully the vaporetti were back running. (Here’s hoping the strike was resolved in the workers’ favor.) Galleria Michela Rizzo was hosting Matthew Attard, who had represented his native Malta in the 2024 Biennale. The exhibition serves as an extension of that project’s exploration into the nautical, a theme that never ages in this part of the world. Giudecca’s distance from the main islands certainly didn’t deter the crowds—the place was packed. Eventually I ducked out to meet curator Manuela Lietti for lunch at a restaurant for locals around the corner. We stuffed ourselves on fish, pasta, and, most filling of all, gossip, before making our way down the fondamenta to Ncontemporary, which was sharing its storefront space with Galleria Alessandro Casciaro in yet another well-gelled tag-team event, which featured a ceramic sculptural installation by Davide Monaldi and a show of paintings by Michele Bubacco. Bubacco’s work is very much a homegrown phenomenon: At his studio on Murano Island, home to Venice’s legendary glassworks, he utilizes old posters from Grafiche Veneziane—still a functioning graphic art factory, the city’s oldest—as his canvas, often integrating the underlying broadside imagery. They paired nicely with Monaldi’s Trovatelli (Foundlings), 2025, a row of tiny masked figures with red-tipped dicks hanging out, sculpted out of clay and strung across a wire bisecting the room.
We dipped in briefly to the bar next door, where local collector Max Sammer was throwing a midday afterparty. But we didn’t have much time to waste—it was back on the vaporetto for a full day of openings that would take us deep into the night. Our next stop: Galleria Alberta Pane, where we stayed for more than an hour—there was just so much to see. Pane is rightly respected as one of the pioneers of Venice’s recent reemergence on the global art scene, having opened this branch of her Paris gallery in 2017. For “On and Beyond: A Love Letter to Shadows,” a theme that resonated with so many of the other ethereal approaches that predominated in Venice throughout the weekend, she enlisted the help of curator Chiara Ianeselli for a show that featured works by seven artists and Fondazione Malutta, a Venice-based collective of more than thirty international artists. Or fifty, by some counts—their membership is often in flux.
As were our own numbers—by now, Manuela and I had been joined by the architect Nunzia Carbone and her partner Francesca Tarocco, currently Director of the Niche Center for Environmental Humanities at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, as well as Maria Pia Bellis, artist liaison and product manager at Barovier & Toso Arte, also in Venice. Together, we decided to move forward to the next opening as a group; strength in numbers! There was much to ooh and aah over at Victoria Miro: Barbara Walker, who spent a lot of time engaging with the works of old masters in this city, produced her own suite of exquisite self-portraits in conté and charcoal on paper, showing once and for all that virtuosic draftsmanship is something that will always be appreciated and exist on and beyond.
By now, our ranks had swelled to include some local collectors. We arrived to Wentrup, which staged a show of flower paintings by John McAllister (again, the botanical motif!) and works by other of the gallery’s artists in the front office. Fine as all this was, Manuela and I found ourselves exchanging wearied glances: We had been on our feet for more than six hours by that point. “I have to wait till dinner,” she said. “If I sit down now, I’ll never be able to get back up again!” Thankfully, there was only one last stop before that culinary reward, and it was just around the corner: an invitation-only cocktail at Spazio Berlendis, where paintings by recent graduates of Venice’s Academy of Fine Arts filled the space. I was feeling less brave than Manuela, so I sneaked off to a back room with a bar and a sofa, where I planted my ass for the next fifteen minutes, watching as a visiting collector attempted to hustle a painting off the wall (he was leaving the next day and wanted to take it in his suitcase; he succeeded in the end).
Finally, it was dinnertime, so Manuela and I made our way to a spot I can’t name or else the locals will forever despise me. We were joined by Noa, who had eventually had to duck away to Padova, and Victor Miklos Andersen, the Danish artist who recently decamped to Venice and lives in a beautiful two-story house—where some legendary parties were hosted during last year’s Biennale—that he intends to use as a residency and exhibition space. Andersen regaled us with stories regarding Coggiola, the artist residency in a massive palazzo on the edge of the Italian Alps founded by his parents, the artists Eva Miklos and Henrik Miklos Andersen. By the end of our meal, he had infused many of us with the desire to pack our bags and go there immediately; but by that point, I was ready to pack it in—at least for the night.
Sunday, the weather was gorgeous—OK, maybe a smattering of rain, but that’s nothing. The day’s openings were largely confined to a few breakfast-serving options, which in Venice means cream- or chocolate-filled pastries and strong black espresso—nothing better to kick-start my overwhelmed brain. First up was Caterina Tognon, which specializes in glass-based work, perhaps Venice’s most famous export, showcasing, among other items, a variation of colored goblets and glasses. I ogled until suddenly hearing echoes of my mother’s voice in the back of my mind, encouraging me to leave quickly before I broke something.
Michele Barbati’s eponymous gallery on Campo Santo Stefano was playing host to the elegant painterly compositions of Sofia Silva, a rising star in Italy. From there, it was on to Tommaso Calabro’s place, which was between exhibitions, with a few works from the gallery’s roster of artists scattered haphazardly on the walls or propped on the floor. In return, Calabro had opened up the doors to his attached apartment, where guests were welcomed with coffee and cornetti, free to take in his private art collection and Harold, his charming poodle.
Then it was on to Beatrice Burati Anderson Art Space & Gallery, a new one for me, situated in an ancient basement warehouse near Campo San Polo. The columned space saw the continuation of the group exhibition “Ars in Herbis” (Art in Herbs), installed last year in tandem with the Biennale. For Gallery Weekend, it featured the add-on of a performance by Ginevra Battaglia, Let Me Be a Flower, 2025, which saw the artist’s live construction of a garment out of sundry flora; again, the botanical motif!
I had two stops left on my tour. IKONA Gallery, situated in Venice’s former Jewish ghetto, is run by Živa Kraus, a painter and erstwhile assistant to Peggy Guggenheim, and is devoted to photography. Its Gallery Weekend showcase featured black-and-white prints by such luminaries as Larry Clark, Roberto Doisneau, and Ferdinando Scianna. Finally, it was to marina bastianello gallery, featuring a solo exhibition by Iginio De Luca, whose series of sculptural and two-dimensional works extrapolated a visual corollary between the canals of Venice and the River Tiber in Rome, where the artist is based.
That afternoon, I reunite with Manuela and Noa, the latter of whom tells us she overheard some gondoliers talking about a tourist who’d fallen into the canal that day. Noa actually saw the guy walking around, covered in wet filth. I’d had my own immersion into the depths by then, in the far less hazardous material of Venice’s art scene, which continues to flourish between Biennales. While it might always be in the uneasy position of perpetually straddling the museumified past and the present, what this city ultimately gives is an alternative future, its possibilities dotted with an awareness of history and all its most beautiful adornments.
