“Pelle d’Istria” is a site-specific exhibition born from a project by sculptor Ketty Gobbo. During a one-month residency, the artist explored the city, selecting Venetian surfaces from walls, doors, pavements, and churches to create casts and transfer every three- dimensional detail onto fabric. Fragments of Venice, collected from outdoor spaces, are reshaped and brought indoors into a new, intimate, and immersive environment.
This work presents the transformation of a solid, impenetrable material into something soft and elastic. Through a constant dialogue between exterior and interior spaces and a balanced growth between artwork and architecture, the location acquires a new, profound, and organic character. Exploring matter not only as a surface but as a dynamic, layered space, each fragment tells the story of the tension between what dissolves and what emerges. This fossil, once a living being, is now an inorganic object that has undergone a metamorphosis, merging with the underlying surface and revealing a movement beneath the skin. The piece exists halfway between a once-living creature and a corroded architectural element, creating an ambiguous identity that reflects on the nature of time and memory.
