Meulensteen

In 2010, Meulensteen presented Venice Case Study, an exhibition of new work by Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrč. An opening reception will be held on Friday, 10 September, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The 2000 Hugo Boss Prize winner and a participant in numerous exhibitions and biennials worldwide, Potrč has gained international acclaim for her sculptures, drawings, installations and research projects. She has redefined the role of the artist for a rapidly changing world by working as the intersections of architecture, urban planning, anthropology and ecology. Her work harnesses the pure imagination exemplified by the best inventors to identify and offer solutions to complex problems. For this exhibition, Potrč will provide an incisive survey of new and recent works. These include a new structure, two large-scale wall drawings, and two series of ink drawings, as well as documentation of several recent on-site, collaborative projects. The facets of the exhibition are connected to one another not only through the fluidity of Potrč’s practice, but through a multi-faceted investigation into the presence and use of water in the urban context. Water is explored as a necessity (and potential destroyer) of life, a physical boundary, and a metaphor for the way people, goods, and information move through the physical and social landscapes. Accordingly, Potrč looks to Venice, a city with one of the strangest and most intimate relationships to water in the world. A large-scale wall drawing and series of ink drawings on paper explore the dense web of Venice’s social, architectural and environmental history. Utilizing both text and image, Potrč investigates the precarious nature of the city’s continued existence and analyzes it as a geographical territory, as a series of islands spread across the Venice Lagoon. These works seek to locate parallels between natural and social conditions in the Lagoon; for instance, the integrity of a man-made island and the ability of a community to thrive both depend on the porosity of their borders.

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