VENICE.- The Fondation d’Enterprise Wilmotte presents from 9 May to 22 November 2026 the Collateral Event of La Biennale Arte 2026, Kan Yasuda - Isole del Silenzio (Islands of Silence) by Japanese artist Kan Yasuda.
The exhibition unfolds as both a physical and contemplative experience, in which Yasuda creates a mineral garden—an inner landscape where silence, simplicity, and essentiality take shape through matter and space. Yasuda is renowned for his exceptional mastery in working stone, through which he produces works of refined sobriety and natural elegance. The smooth texture of marble – long associated with architecture – resonates with particular intensity within the Fondation’s spaces. As in Zen gardens, his sculptures become islands of stillness, where silence transforms into rhythm and musicality. Visitors are invited to move through this inner landscape, slow down, observe, and become fully aware of the space around them. The very act of carving into matter echoes the Japanese notion of Ma (間), a concept central to both art and music. Ma, understood as “interval”, “space” or “distance”, does not signify emptiness as absence, but rather the space between two materials, two moments, or two notes. It is an absence that becomes presence—a silence capable of generating rhythm and resonance. In Yasuda’s works, the void carved into the stone is not subtraction but an active element that balances and harmonises, establishing a continuous dialogue between hardness and softness, between form and non-form.
A video entitled Oltre la forma (Beyond Form) introduces the atmosphere of the exhibition and reveals the process through which the artist sculpts marble. This initial passage leads into the main gallery, immersed in near-total darkness, where a white floor amplifies the sense of purity. Here, ten sculptures are arranged as “islands”, stones scattered within an inner garden that invites contemplation. Their oval and circular forms capture the light differently depending on the viewer’s perspective, while the cavities present in some works add a further dimension, encouraging introspection and calm. Yasuda thus establishes a dialogue between solidity and softness, between form and void. The artist explains that his works emerge from a reflection on “non-matter”, the emptiness that surrounds and defines all things. Within this interior landscape, visitors reach an almost meditative state, sustained by the purity of lines and the balance of volumes, experiencing the space as a place of refuge and serenity.
The exhibition design and lighting, conceived by Agence Wilmotte in Paris, enhance this sense of suspension through grazing light that visually lifts the sculptures from the floor, combined with focused beams that gently caress their upper surfaces.
At the heart of the exhibition unfolds a constant dialogue between fullness and emptiness, density and lightness, giving rise to a state of perfect equilibrium. Here, the void carries the same weight as the solid, and time itself seems suspended in an inner garden of silence and contemplation, where serenity takes form.
