Palazzo Ca' d'Oro

A fresco peeled from a Venetian wall, kept by the centuries.

This canvas is a tribute to the Palazzo Ca' d'Oro, the House of Gold that has bordered the Grand Canal for six hundred years. A palace that has seen doges pass, splendours, silences, and whose interior frescoes still hold the trace of everything that has been.

On this square canvas, the baroque golden volutes seem to have been revealed by time itself. Impastos of coppered red, glints of gold leaf, zones of Mediterranean turquoise. Each layer was painted, covered, then scraped to let breathe what lay beneath. The gold is not added, it surfaces. The reds are not laid down, they rise.

Palazzo Ca' d'Oro is one of the works that open the Palimpseste series: an ancient practice in my work, only recently named. That of letting the successive lives of a painting dialogue with each other, rather than erasing them.

Part of the series Ce que la matière garde (Palimpseste). Matter, acrylic, gold leaf, baroque motifs in relief. Wabi-sabi. To paint the memory of the palace. To sculpt what rises.