This catalog is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Still' by Brian Calvin, on view, at Palazzo Cavanis, Venice, from May 19 to July 2, 2023.

The short circuit between the courtly matrix of the medium and Calvin’s minimal and playful style ultimately generates a joie de vivre in the viewer. These are images imprinted on the retina — images that look at us, Bredekamp would say — that settle in the memory and unconsciously resurface with a series of unsuspected parallels with the clear and soft atmospheres of Hopper’s America but also with the biting satire of Guston who, transgressing the diktat of abstraction in painting, considered the elements of American popular culture — advertising signs, garages, diners, sandwich shops, junk shops, garages — an imaginative reservoir of aesthetic possibilities. — Mario Codognato