EMERSASOMMERSA
Alberto Scodro
Biennale Arte 2026
61st International Art Exhibition
Venice 09.05 — 22.11.2026
OLIVARI, PARTNER OF THE VENICE PAVILION AT THE BIENNALE
For the Biennale Arte 2026, Olivari was invited to take part in Emersasommersa, the installation created by Alberto Scodro for the Venice Pavilion as part of the wider project Note Persistenti, curated by Giovanna Zabotti with the participation of Denis Isaia and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi. In dialogue with the artist, the door handle goes beyond its functional dimension to become a symbol of passage, relationship and discovery: the gesture of opening becomes a metaphor for access to new worlds, cultures and visions. The installation thus builds a dialogue between art and design, in which the act of opening becomes an experience of connection, transformation and knowledge.
Alberto Scodro (Marostica, 1984) lives and works in Nove. After initial training as a restorer, he graduated in Visual and Performing Arts at the IUAV University of Venice and completed his studies through international residency programmes in Venice, Helsinki, Liège, Portorož and Luxembourg. His research spans sculpture, installation and site-specific works, exploring the relationship between space, matter and processes of transformation. His works arise from the fusion, sedimentation and aggregation of heterogeneous materials — sands, glass, metals, enamels and pigments — that give shape to structures suspended between the natural and the artificial. In Scodro’s practice, matter never appears static or definitive, but as a living organism crossed by time, energy and constant possibilities of transformation.
NOTE PERSISTENTI
For the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the Venice Pavilion presents Note Persistenti, a curatorial project by Giovanna Zabotti with the participation of Denis Isaia and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi. In dialogue with In Minor Keys, the theme of the Biennale Arte 2026 conceived by Koyo Kouoh, the exhibition invites visitors to listen to the city’s deepest frequencies: those rising from its foundations, from the memories of its inhabitants, from the transformations of matter and from the invisible relationships that run through Venice. The Pavilion unfolds as a sequence of spaces devoted to different symbolic dimensions of the city — submerged, domestic, mythological and collective — turning Venice into a landscape of layers, presences and persistent traces. Alberto Scodro’s project belongs to the submerged dimension, through a reflection on matter, on time and on what normally remains hidden beneath the surface.
Alberto Scodro’s project EMERSASOMMERSA stems from a reflection on the submerged dimension of the city: what supports Venice yet normally remains invisible, hidden beneath the surface of the water, in the sediments of the lagoon and in the material and temporal layers that over the centuries have helped shape its identity. Through the works of the UG (Untitled Glass-Sand) series, Scodro builds a landscape suspended between the natural and the artificial, evoking mineral concretions, organic formations and fragments that seem to emerge slowly from the Venetian subsoil. Sands, glass, pigments and heterogeneous materials come together in forms reminiscent of geological structures, aquatic organisms and surfaces shaped by time, water and pressure. The installation offers a vision of matter as a living organism in constant transformation, where past and present coexist in a fragile, shifting balance. Venice thus appears not as a monumental image or a static backdrop, but as a layered city, crossed by invisible memories, slow mutations and deep relationships between nature, architecture and time.
A LAYERING OF LANGUAGES
At the Biennale Arte 2026, Olivari door handles enter Alberto Scodro’s project as fragments of a cultural layering built over time through dialogue with architects and designers of different eras and sensibilities. Not a single language, but a plurality of interpretations of the gesture of opening, through which the handle becomes a point of connection between body, space and architecture. Within the installation, the collections coexist as traces belonging to different times: rigorous forms, sculptural signs, essential surfaces and design gestures that tell of different ways of understanding architecture and the relationship with matter. In dialogue with Scodro’s research, these presences become fragments of a landscape suspended between the natural and the artificial, where gesture, space and matter interact within a single visual narrative.
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THE GESTURE OF OPENING
The handles selected for the installation represent different interpretations of the same gesture: opening. Each design introduces a different relationship between hand, space and architecture, turning a functional element into a device for connection, passage and discovery. Historic designs linked to the masters of the twentieth century thus sit alongside contemporary interpretations expressing geometric rigour, essentiality, formal research and a more tactile or sculptural relationship with matter, creating a layering of visions that reflects the continuous evolution of design culture at Olivari. The selection spans different eras and languages in Olivari’s history, bringing together Garda by Ignazio Gardella, Lama by Gio Ponti, Icona by Vincent Van Duysen, Paddle by Barber & Osgerby and Brera by Antonio Citterio. Collections born at different times but united by their ability to interpret the relationship between gesture, form and architecture through autonomous and recognisable design sensibilities. In the context of Alberto Scodro’s work, these handles symbolically become points of access between different worlds: between visible and invisible, between artifice and nature, between industrial matter and organic transformation. Through the everyday gesture of opening, the object thus goes beyond its function and takes on a broader meaning of connection and crossing.
