All the Colors between Black and White

The Venice Biennale is a real and virtual place where micronar- ratives and nanostories, often purpose-built, are mounted and exhibited for a few months in the Giardini and the Arsenale. But beyond these gates, the Biennale’s exhibitions also serve as an amplifier for a series of collateral shows. On the occasion of the 60th Art Biennale, which runs through November 24, 2024, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has mounted “Zeng Fanzhi: Near and Far/Now and Then” in the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia, in the Cannaregio district. Cocurated by Michael Govan, the director of LACMA, and Stephen Little, the museum’s curator of Chinese art, the show is not only a dialogue between art and architecture but also between two masters of form: Zeng Fanzhi, a Beijing- based painter known for making monumental canvases that traverse abstraction and figuration, and Tadao Ando, an Osaka-based self-taught architect of dramatic interiors often defined by light. Reading Andrew Maerkle’s April article in the New York Times, which includes excerpts from a conversation between Ando and Zeng before the making of the exhibition,1 it is clear that the two authors are both interested in the fusion of classical and modern, Eastern and Western sensibilities, which guided the show’s design.