Marlene Dumas, the specter of our emotions

“It is an exhibition on love stories and their different types of couples, young and old, oneroticismbetrayal, alienation, the beginning and the end, mourning, tensions between spirit and body, words (titles and texts) and images ». It is the words that Marlene Dumas chooses to present this one of his exhibition-monstre just set up in the spaces of Palazzo Grassi to Venice. Marlene Dumas. open-end And there first exhibition in Italy so wide and complete. And it’s huge, engaging, sometimes excessive and disturbinglike any love story worthy of the name.

Dumas, born in 1953, a past youth a Cape Townin South Africa, to study fine arts when theapartheid had not yet been banned from the Rainbow Nation, has lived in Amsterdam for over forty years and is universally recognized as one of the greatest living artists.

From this weekend and until January 8 of next year (and the duration of the exhibition already gives an idea of ​​the scope of the event, really #mustsee), the two exhibition floors of Palazzo Grassi are punctuated byunmistakable, disturbing, intense painting by Marlene Dumasin an exhibition curated by the same artist with Caroline Bourgeois that presents over one hundred works, coming from Pinault collection and from international museums and private collections, tracing a path focused on his recent artistic production, with one selection of paintings and drawings ranging from 1984 to todayincluding a group of works created for the Venetian exhibition.

They are works, says the curator, born at nightoften resolved in a few hours, sometimes months: Dumas knows how to be compulsive and meditative painter at the same time. Small canvases are on display alongside monumental works: together they explain the meaning of the title, personally chosen by the artist. Not secondary detail: the guide to the exhibition was created by herself. Take it, in the atrium of Palazzo Grassi, and let yourself be led by the suggestions it writes (and pay little attention to the dates of the works: the path proceeds by associations and references, it does not follow any chronological order).

Everything is fluid: the world of Marlene Dumas is closed and open together.

Caroline Bourgeoiscurator at Pinault Collection and curator of the exhibition, told us: “The title of the exhibition, open-end, to mean that what has been begun has neither a predetermined end nor constraints, which everything can come to a conclusion and that this can take all sorts of forms, it immediately throws us into a poetic dimension. As if only poetry, expressed through painting or words, could share those possibilities that are life (open) and death (end) at the same time ».

The poetic art of Marlene Dumas certainly is, and she understands the full spectrum of emotions human. You can also see it from the images of the works you find here: powerful, right? And we “censored” all the first rooms, full of canvases that discuss sexuality, love, the relationship between male and female bodies and even the pornography that so impressed the young Dumas who has just arrived in Amsterdam (an exhibition opening with bang, someone said …). Most of her substantial production is made up of portraits and human figures who laugh, cry, despair, scream, tremble, reflect. His eye focuses on faces and bodies: «Painting is the trace of the human touch, it is the skin of a surface. A painting is not a postcard, ”she says. True.