Evan Penny: Ask Your Body, Curated by Michael Short
at San Samuele, Venice
May – November 2017

TrépanierBaer is delighted to announce Evan Penny: Ask Your Body, an exhibition of new and recent sculptures by the esteemed international Canadian artist Evan Penny, which will be presented at Chiesa di San Samuele during the 57th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2017. The exhibition is supported by the Art Gallery of Alberta and the Curia Patriarcale di Venezia.

The sculptures in the exhibition are firmly rooted in the artist’s longstanding interest in the human body and how viewers perceive their relationship with themselves and others. While the artist has expanded his sculptural repertoire by openly referencing art from other eras, Evan Penny : Ask Your Body primarily emphasizes the visceral manner with which viewers experience the works. The sculptures presented in Evan Penny : Ask Your Body, several of which are monumentally scaled, can be described as meditations on the many conditions of being human: aspiring to be god-like and failing (Marysas); the body subjected to the sacrifices and indignities of life on earth (Homage to Holbein); having one’s body regarded as fragmented and dislocated (Hanging Torso and Self Portrait after Géricault’s Fragments Anatomiques); and creating empathy through the imagined history of the artist’s life, as represented by a fictional period from the past (Young Self) and from the future (Old Self).

Chiesa di San Samuele, located next to the magnificent 18th century Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal, has been selected as the venue for the exhibition. Built in circa 1000, the church has long held a cultural and historical significance in the area. Titian was known to have maintained a studio in the area near San Samuele when he painted the Punishment of Marsyas (c.1570-1576).

The 122-page exhibition catalogue, published by Skira Editore, with 80 colour images, texts (in English and French) by don. Gianmatteo Caputo, Robert Enright, Dr. Alexander Nagel, and Michael Short, will be available on May 10.

For more information, please see the attached Press Release.

To visit the Evan Penny: Ask Your Body website, please click here.

Image Credit:
Evan Penny in studio with
Self Portrait after Géricault’s Fragments Anatomiques, 2017