Venice, Palazzo Grassi dedicates a solo exhibition to Tatiana Trouvé. It is her first major monographic exhibition in Italy

In Venice, from April 6, 2025 to January 4, 2026, Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection, dedicates a solo exhibition to artist Tatiana Trouvé, curated by Caroline Bourgeois, chief curator of the Pinault Collection, and James Lingwood, independent curator and former co-director of Artangel. Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, Tatiana Trouvé. The Strange Life of Things is Tatiana Trouvé’s first major monographic exhibition in Italy and responds to the carte blanche invitation from the Pinault Collection to leading figures incontemporary art. It is her most ambitious exhibition to date, in which the artist transforms the imposing spaces of Palazzo Grassi into a vast labyrinth of physical and imaginary environments, populated by sculptures and drawings that interweave inner and outer worlds, blending memories, dreams and imagination.

The exhibition opens with an impressive site-specific installation conceived specifically for the atrium of Palazzo Grassi and includes several new sculptures, works from The Guardians series, a selection of large drawings belonging to the Les Dessouvenus series, and seventy works on paper coming directly from the artist’s studio, never exhibited before. A core of more than twenty works is part of the Pinault Collection.

Some of the most recent sculptures and works on paper reveal the mark left on the artist by dramatic events, such as the civil riots that erupted in the streets near her studio in Montreuil, France, during the summer of 2023, or the impact of the 2020 pandemic, depicted through drawings made on the front pages of international newspapers during weeks of isolation. In her work, Tatiana Trouvé also integrates suggestions from distant cultures and alternative tools of knowledge, such as nautical charts and astronomical maps, symbols and objects collected during her travels.

Along the exhibition, images and objects move between two- and three-dimensionality, emerging and reappearing in different scenarios. Through a dialogue between past, present and possible futures, Tatiana Trouvé’s work transports the audience on a journey between spatial, mental and temporal worlds. As Trouvé herself stated in 2008, “all the elements that make up these worlds connect with each other through affinities, echoes, reminiscences, and these relationships draw a shared wandering, without origin or end, in a completely open ecosystem.”

Tatiana Trouvé’s artistic universe is nourished by a vast repertoire of images, texts and memories, as well as a wide range of techniques-from casting to pouring, bleaching to drawing, carving to threading-and diverse materials, including asphalt, marble, bronze, hemp, glass and mirrors. These elements are applied to a wide variety of objects, including rocks and flowers, suitcases and footwear, padlocks and keys, radios and tape recorders, blankets and books, to bring to life in her sculptures and drawings disorienting and hypnotic worlds that are eerie and fascinating.

Image: Tatiana Trouvé, The World of Voices, from the series Les dessouvenus (2022; Pinault Collection). Photo credit: Florian Kleinefenn, Courtesy Gagosian © Tatiana Trouvé, by SIAE 2024

Venice, Palazzo Grassi dedicates a solo exhibition to Tatiana Trouvé. It is her first major monographic exhibition in Italy

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