Koffler Centre of the Arts

Koffler Gallery supports first international solo exhibition of The Spiders and The Bees

Fondazione Giorgio e Armanda Marchesani
Dorsoduro 2525A
Fondamenta Rossa
30123 Venezia

July 4 – August 7, 2022

The Spiders and the Bees, a solo exhibition of paintings by François Xavier Saint Pierre, was presented from July 4 to August 7, 2022 at the Fondazione Marchesani in Venice. Saint Pierre was born in Canada and has lived in Venice since 2020. The Spiders and the Bees is a version of the artist’s recent survey exhibition held in Winter 2021-22 at the Koffler Gallery in Toronto. It was his first international solo show, presented concurrently with the 59^th Venice Biennale, and was sponsored by the Koffler Gallery.

François Xavier Saint Pierre’s work is informed by both early Modernist painting and Classical and Romantic tropes. Many of the works presented at the Fondazione Marchesani were created following a residency at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici. The exhibition’s title references Jonathan Swift's satirical fable “The Spider and the Bee” written in 1704, which is situated within the larger context of the historical debate known as the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns that began within a circle of authors and artists in France in the 17^th century, at the court of Louis XIV. The Ancients valued the foundations of Greco-Roman thought and art, and links to past glories, while the Moderns believed that technology (such as the compass, the printing press and firearms) made them vastly superior. Swift likened the Ancients to bees, who took from various flowers to create something beautiful, and the Moderns to spiders, who spun something new literally out of nothing. These debates about approaches to history have been renewed throughout the centuries and touch on all aspects of European intellectual, artistic and political thought: how do we value what has come before, and does technological advance always make a society superior? Today, for example, it is leading to a rapid decline in manual dexterity. This framework serves as a reference for the artist as he navigates inherited artistic forms, the notion of progress and what it means to be contemporary.

Publication: The Spiders and the Bees

François Xavier Saint Pierre is a Canadian painter and sound artist based in Venice. His interests include connections between classical and contemporary culture, the history of perception and perceptual psychology as they relate to art history, and the relationship between colour and language. His work has been exhibited since 2003 across Canada and in the UK, and he has been an artist in residence in London, in Sweden and at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici.

Presented with the support of Koffler Centre of the Arts / Koffler Gallery.

Spiders and the Bees, International solo exhibition Venice, Italy

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