Palazzo Cini Gallery is an elegant house museum whose rooms are spread across two floors. The first floor offers a compelling testimony to the refined culture of collecting in Venice, preserving the atmosphere of the patron’s residence, while the second floor hosts exhibitions and cultural initiatives. From May 6, 2026, the Gallery presents a project exploring the dialogue between painting, art history, and new technologies through an exhibition dedicated to the works of the American artist David Salle.
At the heart of the exhibition is a custom artificial intelligence model developed from a series of works created by the artist in the early 1990s: the Tapestry Paintings (1990–1992). This conceptual device enables Salle to reflect on a fundamental quality of painting—its ability to bring together different temporalities within a single visual plane. The original Tapestry Paintings were inspired by eighteenth-century Russian tapestries, which themselves were based on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian paintings. In the exhibition, this complex layering of historical references interacts with the AI model conceived by Salle, generating an additional level of interpretation and transformation of images.
Throughout his career, the American artist has often combined new technologies with painterly practice, maintaining the belief that “the best way to subvert the dominance of technology is to co-opt it for different purposes.” Within the rooms of Palazzo Cini, this line of inquiry unfolds against the backdrop of the artist’s own history, offering visitors an opportunity to observe how painting, memory, and innovation can intertwine within a single visual space.
The exhibition is presented in partnership with Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery.