Opening: Palazetto Tito, Venice 04.09.2025
Opening
Venice Be Real
Prof. Dr. Martina Löw, Architectural Sociology TU Berlin, Speaker of SFB 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces, Dr. Michele Casarin, President of Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Director of Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa in Venice (German/English)
Exhibition: 5 – 28.9.2025
Wed-Sun 10.30am – 5.30pm
What does it mean to imagine Venice today? For over twenty-five years, Berlin-based artist and professor Stefanie Bürkle has been photographing the city and its versions around the globe—from Las Vegas to Shenzhen—charting Venice not as a fixed location but as a circulating image, consumed and reproduced across media, memory, and imagination.
This fall, celebrate the culmination of Bürkle’s long-term artistic research project Imaginations of Venice with Venice BeReal at Palazzetto Tito, opening on September 4, in parallel with the Venice Architecture Biennale. There will be an opportunity to see a different iteration of some of the artwork in Berlin, opening on August 2 at Zagreus Projekt with Eating Venice Alive. The berlin presentation also includes the first-ever artist edition of the board game, Venice BeReal.
This fall, celebrate the culmination of Bürkle’s long-term artistic research project Imaginations of Venice with Venice BeReal at Palazzetto Tito, opening on September 4, in parallel with the Venice Architecture Biennale. There will be an opportunity to see a different iteration of some of the artwork in Berlin, opening on August 2 at Zagreus Projekt with Eating Venice Alive. The berlin presentation also includes the first-ever artist edition of the board game, Venice BeReal.
Venice Be Real
All the images Venice has spread around the world for centuries, what ideas and expectations has it triggered and how do these images and expectations shape the city of Venice today?
Berlin-based artist Stefanie Bürkle has been photographing Venice on her travels for the last 30 years. In 2022-2025, she realized Imaginations of Venice, an artistic research project as part of the CRC 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces at the TU Berlin.
The artist sees her own image production as part of the global circulation of images, a loop in which Venice is fixed, reproduced, reduced and multiplied as a projection foil for diverse spatial imaginations. With Venice BeReal, she is now presenting the results of the project for the first time. Her Venice Atlas, an artistic archive of images of Venice, is at the core of the exhibition. In addition to analog and digital photographs, video excerpts from project interviews provide insights into Venice’s realities. A central video work transcends the artistic archive from Stefanie Bürkle’s studio into the exhibition space amidst the visitors.
Mestre, 2023 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst
Pool of the Grandhotel Excelsior Lido, 2011 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst
Selfie Vaporetto, 2022 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst
Eating Venice Alive
Opening 2nd August at 7 pm
02.08. – 11.10.2025
Koch Kunst Galerie & Catering
Ulrich Krauss
Brunnenstraße 9a
10119 Berlin
Menue in September
Reservations mandatory: +49 30 2809 5640
- 09.09.2025 at 7pm
- 19.09.2025 at 7pm
- 24.09.2025 at 7pm
- 30.09.2025 at 7pm
What is Venice, if not a dish served endlessly—sometimes raw, sometimes overcooked, always ornate?
Developed at the intersection of artistic practice and research, Eating Venice Aliveforms part of Bürkle’s long-term project Imaginations of Venice. In this ongoing inquiry, Venice is approached as both a material site and a recursive image—a city consumed by the very representations it continues to generate.
A central feature of the exhibition is a series of fifty photographic compositions—diptychs, triptychs, and multi-image arrangements—drawn from Bürkle’s forthcoming book Imaginations of Venice, to be published by Hatje Cantz in September 2025. Sourced from her Venice Atlas, an archive of over 5,000 photographs spanning twenty-five years, the works offer a kaleidoscopic vision of Venice as a site of symbolic excess and spatial performance.
Interweaving images of the historic city with its global doubles—fromLas Vegas to Shenzhen—they chart a visual choreography of replication and estrangement. Each composition is attuned to Bildarchitektur, or the “photograph’s internal architecture,”revealing micro-histories and shifting spatial logics.The exhibition also debuts Venice BeReal, a board game that invites visitors—or diners—to navigate the city’s layered realities through play. Assuming archetypal roles—tourist, local, investor, influencer, art student—players traverse multiple Venices, encountering luck, deception, and fragmented narratives along the way.
The dinner element of the exhibition features a fixed menu designed by chef, artist, and gallerist UlrichKrauss, served on sculptural ceramic plates created by Stefanie Burkle.
The exhibition is part of the artistic research project Imaginations of Venice, carried out within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” at Technische Universität Berlin.
Touristen Souvenirs /touristic gadgets, 2017 © Stefanie Bürkle/VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2025
20.03.25 2pm – 8pm
Presentation of speculative Venice mapping
International students of architecture at TU Berlin have spent a semester developing Venice mappings and Venice games with Stefanie Bürkle. A presentation of these special maps provides further insights into the art and research project on Venice (English)
23.03.25 3pm -7 pm
a Venice Soundwalk
A Venice Soundwalk with Louise Brenner (German) on the Pfefferberg
St. Marks‘ Square in Shenzhen, 1999 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst
Island of St. Lazarus of the Armenians, 2011 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst
Venetian Las Vegas, 2024 © Stefanie Bürkle – VG Bild-Kunst