silence

Among Venice’s vast number of art offerings, beyond the official Biennale, are works scattered throughout the city at venues both unexpected and intriguing. Sometimes one happens on these collateral events by chance. Walking along Dorsoduro, moving from the Punta della Dogana to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection to the Accademia, look to your right and your eye will be transfixed by Silence, the window installation created by sculptor Charlie Kaplan at Massimiliano Schiavon Art Team (Dorsoduro, 869). Against a backdrop of elegant Murano glass, two 3-foot-high marble sculptures face the street. White Ghost, made of pure white Carrera marble and Black Ghost, of flawless black Belgian marble, stand side by side in provocative silence. Do they represent the contrast of light and darkness or the concept of yin-yang, of balance and harmony, of interconnectedness? Or perhaps, given the theme of this year’s Biennale, Foreigner’s Everywhere, does this black and white allude to themes of identity, to presence and absence?

While Kaplan has exhibited his sculptures in many different Italian venues, as well as in the United States, Italy is essentially Charlie Kaplan’s spiritually adopted country, and in fact – he has spent months here each year for the past thirty, working in his studio or at the foundry in Pietrasanta. He has created large-scale installations throughout Tuscany, always experimenting with the traditional materials the area is best known for, stone and bronze. The two pieces exhibited here are poetic, lyrical, and tactile, as is true of much of Kaplan’s body of work. They invite us to engage, to tap into our own emotions and reference points, to create our own interpretation of their meaning.