Renée Green's 'Tracing' at Fondazione Ratti in Como

Renée Green's first solo exhibition at an Italian institution, 'Tracing,' opened at the Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti in the former church of San Francesco in Como. The installation 'Space Poem #6 (Tracing)' features thirty banners printed by Ratti S.p.A., each bearing the name of a mythical or historical garden, such as Hasht Bihesht (meaning 'Eight Paradises,' a Safavid palace in Isfahan, Iran). The banners hang along the main nave, their translucent surfaces evoking cartographic references to earthly Edens. The exhibition also includes two audio works, 'Imaginary Places (A to Z)' (2002) and 'Vanished Gardens' (2004), installed in side aisles, which whisper incantatory lists of imagined and vanished places. In the central apse, the projection 'Begin Again Begin Again' (2015) weaves together reflections on architecture by Rudolf M. Schindler, life by Thomas Mann, and thoughts by Paul Bowles and Green herself. The exhibition runs until September 10, 2016.