Photographs by Bert Danckaert

Antwerp-based photographer Bert Danckaert creates images that border on works of art: instead of creating street art, the street becomes the art through his camera lens. Check out more: www.bert-danckaert.be/

Via http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/bert-danckaert

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum and the Capogrossi exhibition, Venice

The Peggy Guggenheim museum is a regular stomping ground for art fanatics doing the rounds of Venice. Forget the bustling St Mark's Square or the touristy Accademia galleries, the Guggenheim holds an extensive collection of Picassos, Ernsts, and Man Rays, with an enviable view of the Grand Canal, straight off a marble balcony, which not even the relatively new Tadao Ando-designed Punta della Dogana (The Francois Pinault Fondation) can boast. When I visited, the museum was showcasing a Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900-1972) exhibition, who until that point I had never heard of. The show dedicated a retrospective to the key Italian postwar artist, starting with his early figurative works, which I markedly preferred to his later, more abstract work, that centred on a repetitive, almost primitive symbol.

The Small Utopia Ars Multiplicata at the Fondazione Prada, Venice

Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli founded the Fondazione Prada in 1993, and opened a new exhibition space in the historic palazzo of Ca' Corner Della Regina on the Grand Canal in May 2011, led under the artistic direction of Germano Celant. Following on from their various symbiotic partnerships, OMA led by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, has since been commissioned to design the intervention and transformation of an early 20th century industrial building to the south of Milan. It was to the former that I paid a visit to today, to see their latest exhibition 'The Small Utopia Ars Multiplicata'.

The title of the exhibition refers to the desire to encourage the spread of art in society through the multiplication of objects- a movement that became popular at the beginning of the 20th century through to the 1970s with the emergence of Surrealism, Op Art, Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism. The ground floor of the palazzo takes you through a series of cavernous rooms, exploring the different media in which the boundaries of art disperse, from artist's manifestos and magazines, to sound recordings and experimental films. The main bulk of the exhibition appears on the mezzanine and first floor. This section explores the idea of uniqueness in art, with classic examples from Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, causing the exhibition to take the form a 'supermarket' of art objects, with artist's originals and multiples, all in repetitive glass cases lined up in the great palazzo.

Alvaro Siza: Viagem Sem Programa, disegni e ritratti, at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia

As part of a collateral event for the Venice Biennale this year, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia- whose basement was renovated by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa in 1959- is exhibiting previously unpublished drawings and portraits by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. Once you enter the former Palazzo, be sure to pass by a bookshop carved out by architect Mario Botta and the permeable basement, which was previously rendered unusable by frequent invasion of sea water until Scarpa designed a series of inlets and outlets, with the use of gutters, gulleys and stone steps. The fact that Alvaro Siza recently won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale- an award Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas won two years ago- makes the exhibition all the more worthwhile to visit, not least because it shows a series of intimate and expressive sketches that take the architect away from the rigid plan and into a "journey without a plan" as Siza explained himself. It is refreshing to see an exhibition capturing the most personal aspects of an architect's life. In addition to shedding light on his concept of architecture, the exhibition underscores the power of the everyday, from influential trips with his Brazilian uncle, to recent dinner parties with friends and moments "free from the burden of work". His acute capacity for observation can be seen in the quick lines and pen marks depicting the small details, be it folds in someone's jeans or the intense facial expression on a sitter's face. I went away with five postcards in my pocket and a huge desire to go and sketch the city of Venice!