From Shanghai to Venice: art on a journey from the East to the Giardini di San Marco

For an artist like Stefania Orrù, who is accustomed to living in striking natural settings, her time in Shanghai – during her artist-in-residence programme at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel – was characterised by a search for the city’s green spaces. ‘Although it is an almost futuristic metropolitan environment, the city is dotted with parks and gardens, which offer a respite from the overwhelming modernity,’ said the artist. “For me, they are like characters I have encountered, capable of generating a sort of vibration within the urban context.” Born in 1976, Orrù lived for two decades in Umbria and then nine years on the slopes of Mount Etna, before settling in the Ragusa area, where she currently also has a solo exhibition at the Quam gallery in Scicli (until 3 July, prices around 5,000 euros). “Since arriving in Sicily, I have been influenced by the light and by my surroundings,” says Orrù. “But also by the group of artists associated with the Sicilian Informal movement, such as Franco Sarnari and Piero Guccione, which led me to move away from figurative art—which had characterised my early work—to liberate the medium and open myself up to the world of abstraction. For me, nature embodies the possibility of seeing beyond the visible – that is, of revealing that intricate web of connections, lines, dots and interweavings that surrounds us, and of which we ourselves are a part.” Her artistic exploration is reflected in her painting technique, which draws on ancient traditions, such as fresco painting, using natural materials such as pigments, lime and stones. “The experience at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel was also formative because of the connection I forged with the community of artists in residence,” explained Orrù. “It led me to open up my studio and reveal the stages of my working process, which is something I’d never done before, but it was a crucial new step.”

Stefania Orrù che recupera tecniche antiche come quella dell’affresco per trasferirle poi nel linguaggio della pittura orientale.

Since 2011, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel has welcomed around 600 creative artists from various disciplines – ranging from visual art to dance, music to film, poetry to theatre – from 60 countries. The mission is to give artists time – an idea particularly suited to a watch company like Swatch, which has always made creativity its hallmark. To celebrate the initiative’s fifteenth anniversary, an exhibition was organised at the Giardini Reali in Venice, a hidden gem behind St Mark’s Square which, drawing inspiration from its setting, has created a dialogue between art and nature through the works of five artists who were in residence in Shanghai, including Orrù herself. Flora Fantastica – the title of the exhibition, which opened in early May and runs until 26 July – has brought art into the botanical garden, blurring the boundaries between nature and the artificial, reality and fantasy, and creating an imaginary bridge between the two cities.

Hammer Chen, l’artista cinese accanto a una delle sue opere. La sua pratica consiste nel riportare le tracce dei tronchi degli alberi su fotografie, tessuti o fogli di rame.

The essence of Shanghai is, in fact, evoked in Venice through the works of Hammer Chen, a Chinese artist born in 1989. “My experience was perhaps a little different from that of many other creatives, as I had already lived in Shanghai for many years,” said Chen. “But I wasn’t in such a central area, so staying at the hotel for the residency reminded me of the first time my parents took me there, when I was seven, and the sense of wonder I felt standing before the television tower and the glittering skyline. It was like stepping back in time and, at the same time, entering a new era.’ All of Hammer Chen’s work is rooted in memory and the impressions left by the passage of time, which she translates using the techniques of photography and etching. In particular, for the works on display in Venice, the source of inspiration was the plane trees lining the avenues of the former French Concession in Shanghai, whose bark reveals the passing of the centuries. ‘There are many legends about why Shanghai has so many plane trees,’ says Hammer Chen. “One of these tells of a city governor who planted hundreds of them because his wife was particularly fond of them. What fascinates me most about these trees is the grain of their trunks, which reveals the older and newer layers and their coexistence over time.” Just as memories change over the years, so too do the images in Chen’s works migrate from one medium to another, taking on different forms: from photography to prints on fabric, to those on copper plates. “I take photographs that serve as the source for my prints,” he explains. “I then continue to alter them through the printing process. The subject drawn from reality is distorted and becomes a new experience of reality itself.” His works are available at various galleries specialising in original prints, including in the UK, where the artist studied, such as the Bankside Gallery in London and the Drugstore Gallery in Bristol, and are priced between 300 and 5,000 pounds. Since the end of May, they have also been on display in the exhibition Light of Magic at the Spike Print Studio in Bristol.

HAMMER CHEN prices, hammerchen.com, banksidegallery.com, thedrugstoregallery.com (works ranging from £300 to £5,000). STEFANIA ORRÙ, stefaniaorru.com, quamarte.com (works from €5,000).