After 38 years at the helm of the hugely successful namesake brand, what does one do? Leave home and buy a 15th century palazzo in Venice with your partner. In 2024, after taking a break from fashion, Dries Van Noten did just that, signing the papers in Italy with Patrick Van Helwe. As a result, the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, once home to one of Venice’s most powerful families, has now been repurposed as Dries Van Noten’s Fondazione and now houses a museum. debut exhibition“The only true protest is beauty.” For those interested in seeing what the Resistance looks like in the ceiling frescoes, it’s on display until October 4th.
Geert Brurud himself had a fulfilling year. He started 2026 by curating the first major retrospective of the Antwerp Six (including Dries Van Noten). Now he finds himself co-curating ambitions on a completely different scale alongside Van Noten in the Mediterranean. It takes several people to put together a mini-biennale of more than 200 works from nearly 50 artists. The show unfolds in loosely defined chapters, including light and darkness, abstraction and transformation, nature, materiality, and the body. There, a romantic Christian Lacroix dress sits next to a Comme des Garçons silhouette, which sits next to a Joseph Arzumanov chess set, whose pieces are moved by an AI-programmed robotic arm. A canvas by Stephen Shearer appears nearby, a ring from Casa Codognato catches the light somewhere along the way, and pottery by Kaori Kurihara occupies a small nook.
Everything here is made by human hands. Even the most selective of beauties cannot escape that fact. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from a 1960s Phil Ochs line written during the Vietnam War: “In ugly times like these, the only true protest is beauty.” Where does each of us look for beauty in an environment where beauty is never in short supply?
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
