Mary Weatherford's Venetian Exhibition at Palazzo Grimani

Mary Weatherford (born 1963 in Ojai) presents a solo exhibition at Palazzo Grimani in Venice, running concurrently with a Georg Baselitz show. Her paintings, which initially appear opaque and self-negating, derive from a figurative source—Titian's "The Flaying of Marsyas" (c. 1570–1576)—but must be viewed as compact masses rather than excavated for internal structure. Neon tubes attached to the canvases serve as anchors to objectivity and reality, yet are absorbed into the visual compactness. The artist's conceptual operation embodies a physical, sensation-based painting that is anti-representational beyond typical abstraction, simultaneously addressing conceptual and concrete dimensions of the picture plane. This approach risks appearing passé but yields an unprecedented formula, fully postmodern in its coincidence of concept and matter. The exhibition is reviewed by Stefano Castelli, an art critic and independent curator based in Milan.