Exhibitions
17 April – 31 July 2024
ARENA FOR A TREE IN VENICE
An ‘ark’ in the Arsenale
For the very first time, the Arena for a Tree by Klaus Littmann can be seen on a pontoon in Venice. From a distance, the large ‘hull’ looks like an upside-down dome or a giant walnut shell with a sapling sprouting from it. Seen close-up, it reveals itself as architecture, sculpture and stage rolled into one. Mimicking the growth rings of a tree, its horizontal structure can seat up to fifty people in three tiers.
Artist and curator Klaus Littmann prefers to develop art projects for public spaces. In autumn 2019, the football stadium in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt was transformed into a forest. Arena for a Tree developed like a seed from that large-scale art project.
It was installed first on Basel’s Münsterplatz (Cathedral Square) in 2021 and graced the inner courtyard of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich in the spring of 2022. Venice is its third port of call – and the first one on water. Water makes the temporary island tangible as part of a global ecological cycle. And it also shows trees in their global mobility and adaptability. This is how Arena for a Tree connects to themes from this year’s “La Biennale di Venezia”. Dubbed “Foreigners Everywhere”, it explores the wider field of art as part of the global tension between south and north and provides a space for contemplation and reflection for anything and anyone that might seem distant, foreign and overlooked.