Artepiù: Jim Dine: Dog on the Forge at the 2024 Venice Biennale
The exhibition, a collateral event to the 60th Venice Biennale, brings together paintings, drawings, bronze and wooden sculptures and an outdoor installation of large bronzes. These are monumental and site-specific works conceived for the 2024 Venice Biennale. Paintings and never-before-exhibited sculptures will be in dialogue with each other and with works ranging from the 1980s to the present.
Jim Dine: Like Ulysses Between the USA and Europe
Curator Gerhad Steidl, director and founder of the Kunsthaus Göttingen, was inspired by Jim Dine's incessant odysseys between the United States and Europe, as well as his dedication to the concept of visual, cultural and linguistic hybridization.
“All my life I’ve been on the move,” explains Jim Dine. “It’s hard for me to sit still. It’s a hyperactive quality, I would say. I’ve always liked to go from one studio to another, from one country to another. For me, traveling is like using the red light.”
Jim Dine – Roman-Holy Infant, 2023
Set in a 17th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, the ancient meets the contemporary, casting a reflective light on Jim Dine’s personal history and vision. Reinterpreting his now classic language of instruments, hearts, self-portraits, Venuses and Pinocchios (who will have a room dedicated to them), the exhibition will occupy the two floors of the palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal and its garden embellished with 18th-century sculptures.
When asked about the new paintings, Dine replies: “I’m not interested in making them beautiful. I’m interested in sculpting images that move you .” Conceived as a poetic journey, the exhibition traces the complexity of an intimate oeuvre, deeply rooted in the artist’s knowledge of European art history, and in a relentless exploration of language and self.
Dog on the Forge
Jim Dine explains the curious title of the exhibition, “The Dog in the Forge”: “We needed a title and I called it Dog on the Forge. I called it that because it comes from a poem I wrote and that line seemed to me to be a kind of metaphor for it. This old dog on the hot seat, you know, in the forge where you’ll hopefully be transformed into something better or bigger, or else you’ll be screwed.”
Jim Dine Biography
Born in 1935, Jim Dine grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and began his career in the late 1950s in New York. In the 1960s he exhibited his assemblages and early paintings alongside the new generation of pop artists, from Claus Oldenburg to Tom Wesselmann.
Jim Dine has spent the last 60 years traveling the world, dividing his time between various foundries, studios and printing laboratories, from Göttingen, Germany to New York, from Walla-Walla in the United States to St. Gallen, Switzerland.
For the past 50 years, poetry has been at the heart of his practice, and the artist regularly gives readings and performances of his poetry.
Jim Dine's work is held in over 70 public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the British Museum and Tate Britain in London.
Exhibitions between USA, Europe and East
Jim Dine – The Field of The Cloth of Gold
His works have been presented in solo exhibitions around the world. Among the venues that have hosted them are iconic sites: Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands (1967); Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA (1967 and 1978); Palais des Beaux-Arts – Bozar in Brussels, Belgium (1970); La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California, USA (1974); The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (1988); Setan Museum of Art & Museum of Art in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan (1990).
Borås Konstmuseum Sweden, Switzerland (1993); J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Villa in Malibu, California, USA (2008); The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, USA (2009); Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto, Canada (2010); Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria (2016); Antiken Museum in Basel, Switzerland (2016); Accademia di San Luca in Rome, Italy (2017); Centre Pompidou in Paris, France (2018); Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, Russia (2018), Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Italy (2020) and Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel (2020).
In 2023, Jim Dine inaugurated The Stardust House, a pavilion dedicated to the sculpture Thru the stardust , the heat on the lawn , in Göttingen . This exhibition was followed in June by the exhibition Storm of Memory at the Kunsthaus Göttingen, debuting new sculptures, drawings, prints, and books. That same year, Dine also participated in the exhibition Paravents at the Fondazione Prada, inaugurating a display of 74 portrait drawings donated to Bowdoin College, Maine.
Click to watch the exhibition VIDEO
Jim Dine – Dog on the Forge
Curator Gerhard Steidl
April 20, 2024 – July 21, 2024
Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù
Sestiere Dorsoduro 1057/D, Venice
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Free admission.
Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Organizing institution: Kunsthaus Göttingen, Germany
