On the occasion of the 15th Architecture Biennale, THE POOL NYC is coming back to Venice with Show on Show, a solo exhibition by Stefania Fersini.
The show will run from 25th May through 27th November and it will take place at Palazzo Cesari-Marchesi, located in the Calle Rombiasio in Campo Santa Maria del Giglio adjacent to Piazza San Marco.
Stefania Fersini’s intervention will happen in a space with historical connotations, following the installations at Casa Mollino and Casa Fornasetti. The XVIII Century palace bears the signs of a range of architectural and decorative additions reflecting different times. Abandoned for 30 years the palace is now stripped and walking through it one can perceive a great past.
Show on show presents the place in its own place, generating a temporal perceptive and cognitive loop. It is a silent action to let space and time talk.
The artist has created for THE POOL NYC a work requesting the viewer’s participation.
Stefania Fersini scatters in the halls of the palace ten puzzles laid on recovered furniture. The visitor, finding empty seats, is invited ‘to play the game’, combining tile after tile of still unknown images.
The representation is exactly what the eyes can see while looking at the puzzle, but there are two main differences compared to reality: the first one is the temporal character, as the puzzle is still a messy pile of cards; the second one is the content: the tiles represent nothing, are white, without a subject.
Fersini’s site specific installation could be considered as a tautological gesture for the inherent desire to reveal on the puzzle what the eye can see during the composition of the puzzle itself. It involves the viewer’s interaction and in order to build the puzzle, she does not provide the resulting image, but the reality itself that is represented in the work. The “player” will find a fragmented reality broken in his hands. It’s a mise an abyme that needs to be defined and confirmed.
The subjects are perceived as matter in its details: colors, portions of the
pavement, walls, and wood.
The artist plays with our perception and let us reflect whether reality comes first than representation.
Fersini’s work questions time, which alludes to a becoming, at times perceived as ‘destroying’, in other as ‘creating’.
She expresses her critical relationship with the destroyed image, and asks the viewer to engage in the creation of the work.
The puzzle execution emulates the painting practice, chosen by the artist.
It’s her choice, and for herself.
‘We need time to solve problems and it’s our own time that leads us to the knowledge’.
Her cognitive research focuses again on a missing content.
Following Mirrors at Museo Casa Mollino and Casa Fornasetti, the artist’s use of the white states a missing visual work, to fill that void.
Fersini adds another piece to her journey, waiting to see if the road has taken the lead sooner or later to fill that white piece.

Stefania Fersini (1982) is an Italian artist.
She studied Product Design (faculty of Architecture) and she became part of Nucleo, a collective of artists and designers, based in Torino, Italy. Her designs have been exhibited worldwide over the past years and in the most important art and design fairs such as Design Miami, Artissima, PAD, and many more.
In 2012 she started a personal artistic project.
After a creative crisis Fersini became attracted to the meditative aspect of painting’s execution (precipitated by “The Anxiety of Influence” by Harold Bloom, philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and the studies of Lacan specifically relating to the pleasure principle by means of repetition).
Her last exhibitions include a solo show at Museo Casa Mollino, Torino and at Casa Fornasetti, Milano.
Her artwork has been exhibited extensively around the world. Important institutions such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia, Casa Museo Boschi, Milano and selected galleries in Torino, Lucca, Milano, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Koln, New York and San Francisco have featured Fersini’s work.
Recently, she has been examining the context in which art is displayed and the exhibition itself as a medium.
This is the first solo exhibition with THE POOL NYC.