![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Patrizia-Sandretto-Re-Rebaudengo-2.jpg?w=400\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tIn collaboration with her husband, Agostino Re Rebaudengo, president of Asja Energy, the island was developed as a circular ecosystem. The site is about a 20-minute boat ride from the Giardini, where Koyo Kouoh\u2019s Biennale exhibition opens to the public on Saturday. It was first put to use for a performance by Brazilian interdisciplinary artist Jota Momba\u00e7a in 2022 and two years later for another by Korean dancer Eun Me Ahn.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe site officially inaugurated on Thursday, and will open gradually, initially accessible only during exhibition openings coinciding with future editions of the Biennale, and during guided tours organized by reservation; Venice has provided an on-request stop on the ACTV Line 12 on the Murano-Burano route.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe island itself has a rich history, starting a millennium ago with a monastery and a resting place for pilgrims. Later it was a home for Cistercian nuns, a quarantine site, and then a home for Franciscan friars. Under Napoleon, the monastery was demolished and the island was adapted to a military outpost, with powder magazines, weapons depots, and defensive structures rising on the land. It was abandoned in 1961 and nature took its course, with brambles spreading and structures collapsing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo Napoleonic-era powder magazines are transformed into exhibition spaces, one hosting the group exhibition \u201cDon\u2019t have hope, be hope!,\u201d featuring works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tThe other is home to \u201cFanfare\/Lament,\u201d a solo exhibition by Matt Copson, curated by Swiss supercurator Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at London\u2019s Serpentine Galleries. Atop the building are a series of sculptures made from handcrafted kites produced specially for the show. The first takes the shape of a group of disembodied eyes looking out on the Lagoon, the other a strange, towering black body. A group of seven musicians, meanwhile, play a score by British composer Oliver Leith, a fanfare welcoming visitors to the island. In the darkened space of the former powder magazine is a set of high-tech works that Copson likens to modern cave painting. Laser animations in blue \u201cdraw\u201d on walls that are coated with phosphorescent paint that absorbs light and re-emits it with a delay, faintly glowing in green and reflecting the lasers\u2019 drawings.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe grounds are host to permanent installations by Claire Fontaine, Mario Garcia Torres, Hugh Hayden, Goshka Macuga, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Thomas Sch\u00fctte.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tFor me, Hayden\u2019s is the big draw. A new commission, Huff and a Puff<\/em> (2026) takes its title from the fable of the three little pigs. It is a full-scale chapel that seats about 10 people, tilted forward at a vertiginous 40-degree angle, as if the wolf were doing his best to blow it down. Its brick exterior echoes the former powder magazines nearby, and it\u2019s topped by a green metal roof and a 30-foot-high bell tower. Inside, a crucifix sports a spooky ribcage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tRosenkranz\u2019s Old Tree (Pink Seas)<\/em>, 2026, may be the first thing many visitors see on the island, for which it was conceived: a bright pink, 15-foot-high sculpture of a tree whose branches and roots resemble branching blood vessels or neural pathways.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNearby is another dramatic piece, Goshka Macuga\u2019s GONOGO <\/em>(2023), a polished metal rocket standing on a fluorescent blue launch pad. Also commissioned for the island, the work by the Polish-born, London-based artist had its public debut in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, as part of the exhibition \u201cReaching for the Stars,\u201d of work from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo collection, but it was first conceived for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, where it was a finalist in 2021. \u201cMy sculpture,\u201d explains Macuga, \u201cvisualizes the dilemmas we are facing: it embodies fantasy and reality, aspiration and failure.\u201d At a moment of the hopeful Artemis II <\/em>mission as well as the world\u2019s wealthiest people seeking to colonize Mars after helping to ruin Earth, the piece is rich with associations, leaving visitors with plenty to think about as they launch, if not on their rockets then on their water taxis back to Venice proper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/fondazione-sandretto-re-rebaudengo-art-island-venice-1234784446\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Isola-di-San-Giacomo.jpg?w=1024″] The international art world visiting Venice for the preview week of the Biennale woke up Thursday with great relief to a sunny forecast after two days of rain. For some, the day got even better with a visit to the island of San Giacomo, in the Northern Lagoon, where ARTnews Top 200 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1923445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GONOGO-Goshka-Macuga.jpg?w=400\")
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