"Herz der Finsternis" Martha Jungwirth in Venice

The first appointment of these Biennale preview days in Venice did not take the art crowd to the Giardini on Tuesday morning, but to Palazzo Cini on Campo San Vio. In this extraordinary private museum, Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Istituto di Storia dell'Arte of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, curated an exhibition by the Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth. Her "Heart of Darkness" refers to Joseph Conrad's eponymous novella.

During her stay in Paris last year, Jungwirth visited the Musée de l'histoire de l'immigration in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a building constructed for the Paris Colonial Exhibition of 1931, and was deeply moved. ‘The subjects of migration and persecution have taken on a completely different reality for me. It disturbed me, this long history of displacement, and how it is still going on today,’ she explained.

The resulting Porte Dorée series consists of imposing large formats as well as small-format works. On a sand-coloured background, she develops a colour palette in a gesture that is as abstract as it is dynamic, referring to the dense wilderness of the Central African rainforest, which is vividly described in "Heart of Darkness", in impasto pink and red tones as well as ‘lush green and petrol tones.’