Gioielli Nascosti di Venezia - Invisible Passages A Connection between that Which is and that Which has always been

After the exhibition The Constellations housed at the San Giovanni di Malta church received an excellent response by public in 2019, the Chinese artist Cen Long is back in the lagoon City to exhibit, in the halls of Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, his latest works collected with the title Invisible Passages.

His artistic approach, characterized by a simple but never banal brushstroke, and indeed, on the contrary, very sophisticated, together with a rigorous composition, made even more such by a layered chromatism and almost exclusively played in shades of white and black, except for the almost diaphanous complexions, leads him to achieve figurative pictorial results which seduce and fascinate the viewer.

His apparent realism hides deep and abstract truths which, while evoking a feeling of serenity, involve those who come in front of his characters in a vortex of emotions which lead people to delve into the meanings and values of life. The figures which animate his canvas fight against daily labours and anxieties with foreseeable, sincere and emotional images, which inhabit the daily reality of human complexity.

For the occasion, Cen Long, wanted to dialogue with some works of ancient art belonging to the I.P.A.V. Collections: a XVI century painting depicting San Girolamo penitente nel deserto [Penitent Saint Jerome in the desert], a half of XVI century wooden sculpture depicting the same Saint wearing cardinal clothes, two wooden sculptures depicting the Virgin Mary – the first, of the XVI century depicting the Virgin and the Child , the other one, of the late XVIII century, depicting the Madonna assunta circondata da cherubini [Lady of Assumption surrounded by glorifying angels] – and particularly, the famous sketch of Paradiso realized by Jacopo Tintoretto for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Palazzo Ducale.

Gioielli Nascosti di Venezia