“E’ SOLO UN TRUCCO”, the first solo show in Venice of the Ukrainian artist Daniel Spivakov, fresh from the success of the “Chronorama” exhibition in Palazzo Grassi and the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.
The project is divided into two rooms, the first on the ground floor opens to visitors an unprecedented body of pictorial works conceived and produced during Daniel's last year of Venetian residence, which since 2023 has seen part of our city and within Crea of his artist studio. The works see their particularity in the research and use of absolutely unusual materials, such as tea towels,
gauze, recycled, resulting, discarded and unused fabrics from the artisan activities of the Cantieristica Minore Veneziana.
Once upstairs the visitor encounters and interacts with a monumental work depicting the make-up face of a clown.
The title of the exhibition, inspired by the Oscar-winning film "La Grande Bellezza" by Paolo Sorrentino, looks at the final scene in which Jep Gambardella, in a short and intense monologue, reasons around the nature of the journey and the individual moments of life, focusing on the his point of view on the meaning, meaning and role of art within the human journey.
For the protagonist in his last words, everything is “just a trick”.

In the words of Daniel Spivakov
“tragedy becomes comedy and comedy becomes tragic. The neglected things you left behind become backdrops and stages for new possibilities to arrive. Thus a rag becomes a landscape, a blasphemy becomes a prophecy and a clown becomes an x-ray of your burning heart.
This is the transformative nature of art.
That's the trick.

Daniel Spivakov was born in 1996 and spent his childhood in Kiev, Ukraine. At 15, he moved to Oklahoma through a family exchange program. Speaking only his native language, it was during this period that art became a fundamental vehicle of communication for Spivakov. The combination of a post-Soviet upbringing and adolescence in the American South allowed for a unique worldview that Spivakov draws on regularly throughout his process. After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2020, he moved to Berlin for a short time but now lives and works in Venice.

​

The exhibition is part of the "Palcoscenici Veneziani"; project, whose lead body is Forcoop Cora, born thanks to the «Culture in Rete» tender, pr veneto fse+ 2021 - 2027 priority 1 - employment, which the Veneto Region has allocated for the implementation of projects aimed at workers of cultural enterprises, in a territorial network logic. It is proposed as an innovative initiative aimed at creating a vibrant and collaborative cultural ecosystem in the Metropolitan City of Venice. Through the collaboration of companies in the cultural, artistic and entertainment sectors, the project focuses on training, expanding the audience and social integration, promoting initiatives that combine tradition
and innovation. With the support of local and academic partners, "Palcoscenici Veneziani"; wants to consolidate the role of Venice as a dynamic center for the arts and cultural-creative tourism,
enhancing both its ancient traditions and the most modern cultural expressions.