Florian Dombois: Galleria del Vento

“What would Venice be without the wind? Where is the wind when it isn’t blowing? And how might the idea of research be made fruitful for the arts?”

The program of the Research Pavilion in Venice continues with Florian Dombois’ exhibition Galleria del Vento, and numerous Camino Events.

For the past five years, Dombois has been operating a wind-tunnel lab, which brings together various disciplines, on the roof of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). The tunnel functions as a picture puzzle: for researchers accustomed to starting with a problem, it provides a tangible surface and a stringent experimental arrangement; for those, however, who move outside the logic of a scientific problem, its interior and its walls provide an empty space, an invisible sculpture. To see the wind, one must first visualize it and introduce smoke, feathers, or soap bubbles; to explore the wind, one must propose a model, a shape, or a kite. And thus reveal oneself.

Florian Dombois’ show in the Research Pavilion has four aspects: (1) The opening will feature the wind motor from the Zurich lab. During the five-week exhibition, Dombois will develop this motor into a wind tunnel, and thus slowly shape the swirling wind generated by the machine. (2) Every morning, he will sail out into the lagoons of Venice to collect the material needed for the tunnel from abandoned islands and sites and assemble it into a collage. (3) The exhibition will include a Palaver, a space created especially to facilitate debate on art and individual works. Discussions held every Saturday will consider how to develop a kind of research able to serve artists and the arts. (4) The show will also include a white cube section for collecting and displaying articulations from the public rehearsal that can claim to be more than purely ephemeral.

Dombois’ Palaver guests are a.o. Peter Ablinger, Donatella Bernardi, Pavel Büchler, Sabeth Buchmann, Michelangelo Corsaro, Andrea Curtoni, Anna Engberg-Pedersen, Tom Holert, Giulia Mazzorin, Dieter Mersch, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Philippe Pirotte, Stefan Prins, Anton Rey, Hito Steyerl and Germán Toro Pérez. 

The Palaver discussions are also part of the Research Pavilion’s Camino Event series, which consists of 50 multi-disciplinary artistic activities; screenings, music, seminars, artist talks and performances by over 100 artists and artist-researchers from art universities of Europe. For more information on all upcoming Camino Events visit www.researchpavilion.fi/camino-events.

The Research Pavilion: The Utopia of Access, May 11 to October 15, showcases how universities and academies function today as experimental laboratories within contemporary art. The Pavilion wants to give room to a variety of artistic interpretations and viewpoints involving access-oriented thought, in particular by connecting it with aesthetic, scientific and political perspectives. 

The Research Pavilion is created and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki), realized together with Norwegian Artistic Research Program (NARP) and the Swedish Art Universities’ collaboration Konstex, in co-operation with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Zurich University of the Arts.

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