Judi Harvest

by Enzo Di Martino

Perhaps one needs to present this exhibition by Judi Harvest with a radio transmission, like that mythic one of Orson Welles, which announced a clamorous disembarkation of Martians on earth, putting American citizens at the time, in a condition of huge fear.

We have to see if the visitors of Caffè Florian are seized with same observed panic in this historic Venetian locale, invaded with her simpatico and harmless Martians in glass. It seems they descended from a mysterious sphere—a communication satellite, a space ship or perhaps a UFO—placed in the cupola of the ceiling.

To tell you the truth, we are use to this American artist who has always searched to obtain with her exhibitions the element of surprise, which astonishes with wonder. At other times, she filled the space of a gallery with leaves and dried flowers, or when she exhibited a series of gold fish, swimming in water. In the more recent years, her "exhibition-performances" have assumed a more clamorous aspect.

In 2001, with "Rhinoscimento" she in fact revisited the celebrated painting from 1751 by Pietro Longhi in which the Venetian painter positions an exotic rhinoceros brought to Venice to "wake up with wonder". Two years later, she installed in front of Harry's Bar, "Fragmented Peace", an enormous sculpture in the form of a Buddha made from hundreds of pieces of Murano glass.

In 2005 she placed in the same location, a huge sphere, titled "Luna Piena- Full Moon" containing over 2000 smaller colored spheres, again in Murano glass.

It does not surprise us now that arriving today, are her glass Martians, and we ask, is it possible that we could see a Martian drinking a coffee at Caffè Florian? She responds jokingly, it is enough to observe with attention the thousands of "aliens" everyday that frequent Piazza San Marco. Without knowing anything about Venice, as if they disembarked by chance, arriving from another planet, another world.

This exhibition of Martians, titled not by chance "Venetian Satellite" would certainly have been appreciated by the Italian artists of the "nuclear" movement in the 1950's and by their Dadaist friends who frequented the mythic "Café Voltaire" in Zurich. Because they too always searched within their work, to "surprise with wonder" moving the expressive borders of art towards the extremely fantastic and transgressive, imagining we could say, distances from the horizons of daily life.

With an attitude which at times seems anti-academic, but in every sense, is always attentive and arrives at "a work made of art". It is important to note, at this point, that with all of the amazing visions, the works by Judi Harvest always reveal, at close look, a strong symbolic and metaphoric value, attached like an unquiet emotion derived from large historic events when the man of our time is often the spectator and not the protagonist.

There is no need therefore, to be deceived by this uninhibited posture, because her intention is always to make art and place it on the contrary, in the irrevocable historic center of a time which may be irremediably lost. And to realize in the end, in all cases, a simple but personal and characteristic imaginative operation.

One sign of her poetic visions of the world is that which also examines and allows one to reflect and to recognize, unavoidably at times, even if in a disquieting manner.

Venezia, July, 2006