Big Bambú in Venice

The first exhibit of the Big Bambú series was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY last year, it ranked 4th in total attendance of a contemporary art exhibition internationally and the 9th highest attended exhibit in the entire history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The central aspect of the ongoing sculpture is a 50' tall hollow tower of bamboo, with a trail spiraling up to the top reaching a 20' wide roof top lounge/Altana (there will be limited access). The Starns and their crew of rock climbers will continue to lash together bamboo, sustaining the spiral upward until the closing day of the sculpture, June 15th.

As Big Bambú is about the continual evolution of living things, in addition to 2,000 fresh poles harvested from a farm in France, Doug and Mike have cut several of the Fragments out of the Metropolitan installation. The Starns: "We are grafting a new Big Bambú and using 1,000 poles from the Met as stem cells, the Venice piece will still be the Metropolitan piece but also a new one, Big Bambú is always growing and changing and becoming something new-- as we all are."

The Starns' Venice location is the former United States Consulate and is next door to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal. This is the first time it has been used as a location for a collateral exhibition since the famous triumph of American art in 1964 as the Annex to the American Pavilion when Robert Rauschenberg won the Grand Prize. It is currently the home of the Venice campus of Wake Forest University.

The installation is of short duration,
open from May 29th through June 15th 10AM - 6PM, with late hours during the first week,
from Saturday May 28th-Saturday June 4th,
the installation will be open until 9 pm.

day one and day

Below: Rauschenberg's painting Express, being unloaded from a work boat on the Grand Canal into the same building where we are installing big bambu. Express is now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection which is housed in the Villahermosa Palace in Madrid.

Unloading the the last 500 poles of 2600 total in the piece here in Venice

Pope Benedict, as it passes by our front door.

Big Bambú in Venice is created from 2,000 fresh poles harvested from this beautiful farm in France, along with 1,000 poles and several Fragments cut out of the Metropolitan installation, from these we are grafting the new Big Bambu.  Doug and Mike Starn would like to thank  La Bambouseraie and Les Pépinières de la Boubouseraie for their support in kind of the project in Venice.
project in Venice.