At Ca’ Corner della Regina, the Swiss artist presents “Monte di pietà,” an immersive and subversive exhibition that offers a broad reflection on our relationship with objects and money; and, more generally, on humanity as a whole.
Fondazione Prada gave carte blanche to Swiss artist Christoph Büchel for an immersive, subversive reflection on our relationship with objects, money, and, more generally, on the human condition. Büchel transformed Ca’ Corner della Regina, the palazzo Fondazione Prada calls home in Venice, into a pawn shop. The palazzo used to be, in fact, a pawn shop in the years 1834 to 1969. The artist enjoyed digging deep into the several layers of history of Ca’ Corner, and a myriad of memorable objects make up the exhibition: appliances, furniture, clothes, paintings, toys, books, documents… and among them, masterpieces by artists such as Klein, Manzoni, Paolini, Duchamp, Beuys, looking like they’ve been pawned themselves.
How do we value things? On what basis? The Monte di pietà (pawn shop) is an analysis of the concept of debt, presented as the main vehicle for political and cultural power. Christoph Büchel questions debt and its essential, complex role it plays in the social and political balance of our societies. This notion of debt is all the more relevant in Venice, a city that contributed immensely to trade and to the birth of modern financial markets.
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