Le mer Le vent Le vent Le mer Le sud Encore Le sud Encore Le Temps Encore Encore Le vent (…)

10 & zero uno is pleased to present La mer Le vent Le vent La mer Le sud Encore Le sud Encore Le temps Encore Encore Le vent (…) the solo show by Marco Godinho (Salvaterra de Magos, 1978), curated by Chiara Boscolo, Claire and Paul di Felice, from November 16th to January 12th, 2025 at its space located close by the gardens of the Venice Biennale. The exhibition opens to the public on 16 November at 6.30 pm and is narrated in the words of Claire and Paul di Felice.

What if everything was just a matter of encounters: with the sea, words, wind, people?
In the work of Marco Godinho, where life and art are one, daily poetry and shared creativity defy all temporality and spatiality. Moving, retracing one’s steps, this Ulyssean approach that brings him back to Venice, after being invited to the Biennale Arte in 2019 and to the Museo Fortuny in 2023, may be the embodiment of a recurring artistic attitude marked by pilgrimage and wandering, but also by contemplation, sharing, and action.

This return to Venice also allows for a reinterpretation of his work Written by Water, presented as a limited edition artist book of 30 by LAB by MAI Photography and Contemporary Art and “the experimentation with other gestures, mostly in situ, engaging with the exhibition space, the environment, and the context of the lagoon, the sea, the elements forming a floating temporality, a living space in constant mutation.”

The exhibition title gathers the first words of a long poem, “similar to a chorus or mantra with variable gestures, unfolding like a constellation within and beyond the exhibition space,” as Marco Godinho puts it. The 10 & zero uno gallery, a former butcher’s shop in the working-class neighborhood of Via Garibaldi, with its light grey naturally “patinaed” marble walls, suggestive decontextualized details, materials, and display cases, is not just the container of the works but becomes part of the content itself, transforming into “artwork,” a conceptual installation orchestrated by Marco Godinho where every element finds its place.

From the outside, the sun’s rays partially fall on the photographs and installation, which can be glimpsed through the letters of the title covering the gallery’s window. Inside, the photographs taken during the filming of his video Left to Their Own Fate (Odyssey) (2019 Venice Biennale), documenting the action performed with his actor brother—who silently reads the entirety of Homer’s Odyssey—during three initiatory journeys along the Mediterranean Sea, dialogue with fragments of texts from the new poem The Sea, The Wind… written by the artist with pencil on the walls of the gallery. The traces of a performance, where the artist transported sand from Lido Beach in his pockets, take on a particular place in this new context where the notions of movement, migration, fragility, and transformation are symbolized metaphorically. What emerges from these two silent performances is the significance of gesture and the natural materials used. The poem is activated in a third aspect through the viewer, who carries away a fragment of the poem upon leaving the exhibition.

At the back left of the small gallery space, the small blue-painted room becomes a spiritual space where the artist’s book box is presented on a pedestal, allowing the visitor to discover in complete intimacy this work that becomes a temporary offering, a shared gesture from the artist discerning another materialization of the visual and textual journey.

The exhibition, through a poetic deconstruction and a re-enunciation of the poetic, visual, and performative, explores various aspects of migratory processes by creating interactions between human and non-human entities and navigating between nature and culture.