Press Release The Andy Warhol Museum to Present an Installation by Joseph La Piana In Venice

The Andy Warhol Museum is pleased to announce the presentation of Joseph La Piana’s The Venice Text Project on Isola di San Servolo in Venice, Italy. This site- specific installation, on an island formerly housing the Venetian Republic’s military hospital, is curated by The Warhol’s Acting Director and Milton Fine Curator of Art, Eric Shiner. The work will be on view from May 31st to June 5th with a cocktail reception for the artist on Friday, June 3 from 6-8 p.m. A private water taxi departing from Ponte della Paglia near San Marco Square will be available from 5:30-8:30p.m. for use by reception guests.

Two towers, coasts, poets, mindsets, voices, personas, histories and countries converge in a single gesture on San Servolo island. New York City-based artist Joseph La Piana’s 20-foot-tall work will skim the rooftops of its surrounding courtyard structures and stand as a monument to lives lost and opportunities missed. This work brings together the poetry of Whitman and Ginsberg, analyzing the American condition over the ebb and flow of time. La Piana layers text which references the constant wars that rage within and without. For La Piana, these towers become repositories of meaning and markers of both hope and despair. They represent the twin towers fallen ten years prior and two figures engaged in deep dialogue.

Joseph La Piana was born in Brooklyn in 1966 and received his BA from Florida State University in 1988. He has been represented by the gallery since 2008. La Piana’s work is included in the collections of The Financial Security Service Assurance Holdings Corporation, the First National Bank of Arizona, and in numerous private collections.