Grisha Bruskin Alefbet: The alphabet of memory

For the first time in Venice, Grisha Bruskin (Moscow1945) offers us an evocative and inspiring exhibition, a complicated rebus but not impossible to decipher: Alefbet is an alphabet of Kabbalistic nature, populated by 160 figures including angels and demons from the animal world, men pierced by lightning or carrying upon the shoulders their own shadow. A pictorial Carnival, a little fairy, a sort of "archaeological" reconstruction of Shoa where fragments of a lost past resurfaces, experienced only indirectly by the artist, through the stories of relatives.

The view extends from preparatory drawings and continues with gouache and 6 paintings to culminating in 5 large tapestries, the heart of the exhibition: without haste, after a first glance, it is necessary to walk few steps back in order to understand the hidden meaning: "I have always felt a cultural emptiness and I wanted to fill it with an individual artistic level. The Jews are the people of the book, the book is their fundamental symbol: the book is the world and the world is a book,the book is the model of my art and ALEFBET in particular.

Useful information: Venue of the exhibition: Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Castello 5252 www.querinistampalia.org/ Date: from February 12 to September 13, 2015 Public opening: Tue-Sun 10-18 hours. Closed on Mondays. Entrance: free