Lorna Simpson Comes Full Circle in Venice with ‘Third Person’
Over 50 paintings, installations, sculptures, collages and films staged in the Tadao Ando-designed Punta della Dogana
Summary
- American artist Lorna Simpson has unveiled a new solo exhibition in Venice, titled Third Person
- Staged at Punta della Dogana, the exhibition features over 50 cross-medium artworks in a sweeping review of Simpson’s practice from the last decade
- The show is now on view through November 22
Buzz around Lorna Simpson’s new solo, Third Person, is sweeping Venice. Following a blockbuster Met exhibition last spring, the multi-disciplinary pioneer heads to Punta della Dogana, the Venetian art museum designed by Tadao Ando, for her most significant European show yet.
Featuring over 50 artworks – paintings, collages, sculptures, installation and film – the exhibition matches the painterly focus on Source Notes, the first museum show to delve into Simpson’s canvases. She’s also debuting new works for the occasion, created in response to the space.
Third Person marks a full-circle moment for the artist, a history-maker in Venice. She became one of the first African American women to exhibit at the Biennale in 1990, and was later invited back for the 2015 edition.
Curated by Emma Lavigne, the Director and Curator of the Pinault Collection, the exhibition also gathers selections from her most emblematic series created since 2015, such as Ice, Special Characters, Earth and Sky, her latest body of work, alongside a number of paintings created for her 2015 Biennale participation, curated by Okwui Enwezor.
“Third Person is a play on the literary point of view in terms of how one speaks about oneself or addresses someone else,” Simpson mused in a recent interview. “But it does also make you think outside of the binary: Who is the third person?”
Having started her career as a conceptual photographer, Simpson’s practice is defined by her ardent curiosity, using images, collage, film and, as of the last decade, painting to reckon with conventional narratives and the “uncertain zones at the edges of the visible,” the museum wrote.
Third Person by Lorna Simpson is now on view in Venice until November 22.
