“The official program for the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale includes more than two dozen so-called “collateral events.” They are being held in sumptuous museums and palaces, rented short term for small fortunes by powerful organizers, including art foundations and international galleries. No matter how many miles we walked through the labyrinth of the Serenissima, it was impossible to see everything, but below is a selection of events that particularly appealed to us for their discreet, implicit or evocative affinities with the “island city”…”

“When the paintings arrived from my studio, they appeared completely different to me: it was as if they belonged to the palazzo. I was very surprised.“ It is the same for the visitor. On the ground floor, where the rooms have fairly low ceilings and bare walls, the small paintings of heads are perfectly at home; likewise the very large ones in the noble gallery, upstairs, where they get along well with the decorative elements and the allegorical frescoes.

“Jim Dine is another artist whose origins trace back to Pop Art and who is in great form with a presentation at Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù, open through 21 July and presented by TEMPLON. Dog on the Forge, curated by Gerhard Steidl, is a comprehensive presentation of 32 works made for this show. Sculptures are placed beautifully in the palazzo’s garden and throughout the building. There are Venuses, heart paintings, a monumental hammer, a room of Pinocchios, and two giant vases with writing scrawled around them.”

“Together we pass Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, reaching the Dorsoduro district in Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfú, near the Gallerie dell'Accademia, for the inauguration of Jim Dine – Dog on the Forge , curated by Gerhard Steidl, in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Göttingen. The exhibition is a collateral event of the 60th Venice Biennale.”

Between festivals dedicated to media art and exhibitions of international artists, here are the most interesting events to see in Venice according to Harper’s Bazaar.

“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.”

“At age 88, Jim Dine is still works, travels and continues to create new works of art in multiple styles and a variety of mediums. He divides his time among homes and studios in Paris, Göttingen, Germany and Walla Walla. ‘When you paint every day, all year long,” he said, “then the subject is essentially the act of working.’”

“I’m reminded of the time when Jim Dine gave a demo for a printmaking class I was taking at university in Connecticut, USA. He showed students how to turn a piece of cardboard into an etching plate. First, you would incise marks on the discarded sheet with a Dremel or simply rip layers of cardboard off with your hands, then brush Elmer’s glue onto it to give it a slick, smooth surface for ink to pool in. You would then go about printing with it in the intaglio method and voila! A cheap and easy way to make an etching. The demo left a long-lasting impression on me…”

For Dine, physical labor and art-making are interchangeable: “When you paint every day, all year long, then the subject is essentially the act of working.”

“A pioneer of pop art and one of the early instigators in the “Happening” movement, Jim Dine, is probably best known for his “heart” series. Once as ubiquitous as Keith Haring’s dancing figures, they have perhaps misdirected attention away from a 60-year career rich with other pioneering work. Mr. Dine, who by his own admission is compulsively productive, has been especially prolific since the pandemic, churning out drawing, painting, and even monumental sculpture.”