Venice.
Homeland and destination of merchants, sailors, travelers and adventurers from all over the world.
Between the early Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age, Venice was the trading hub of the known world. There wasn’t a single person that had never heard about the city, neither a merchant that had never been there. Venice was the nerve center of what was called “Spice Road”. A trade route that connected the Far East (especially the Mongol Empire) with the Old World, which became famous thanks to the adventures of Marco Polo (the Silk Road) and that, after the discovery of America, extended its path reaching the Caribbean and the coasts of Central and South America.
The lagoon city was a communications network where precious goods were traded, such as silk, as well as hitherto unknown spices. Luxurious items, destined for the table of powerful and rich noble and upper-class families.
Alberto La Tassa
(1986) can be defined as a Venetian artist, since his bond with the city and its historical past almost became a stylistic feature of his work. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and he participated in group and personal exhibitions in Italy, then pushing himself right to the Far East, in South Korea, participating in a residency program in the city of Gyeongiu, the Gyeongiu International Residency Art Festa in 2018. In 2019 he also participated in the Pink Art Fair in Seoul, also in south Korea.
He currently lives and works between Venice and Miami. His works are influences by the two cities, above all from a luministic point of view and therefore in the use of colour.
An artist with the desire to visit the world, like the Venetian sailors of the fifteenth century, and to shape it through his drawing and his painting, always accepting new challenges and expanding his horizons, both artistic and personal.
The same can be said for the cuisine of
Donato Ascani
, chef of
Enrico Bartolini’s GLAM restaurant
. His cuisine mimics the Venetian alphabet but contains within itself the very concept of this city, which is that of metamorphosis. Traditional flavors are enriched with exotic influences, reconstituting themselves again and again, aways acquiring different forms without ever losing their identity.
Inside the restaurant, Sist’Art Gallery represents some works by Alberto La Tassa, a selection capable to match perfectly with the concept of the restaurant and its new wall decorations, a project by the designer Stefano Guidotti.
La Tassa’s works are of surrealist inspiration: the plastic anatomy, realized in a absolutely detailed manner, suddenly seems to “melt”, dematerialize, leaving room for color and for the sensations of amazement of those who are observing the painting.
Works capable of asking questions rather than giving answers; that are almost mystical, fascinating.
The same sensations that European explorers must have felt in front of never-before-seen species of animals and plants, that were totally unknown before entering the dense eastern jungle, in search of these extremely precious exotic goods: spices.
A narration in stages, which is told in the walls of the restaurant.