Imaginations of Venice
Venice exists not only as a physical place, but also as an image circulating globally. How do these imaginations and expectations shape the city of Venice today? For 25 years, Stefanie Bürkle has been photographing Venice during her travels around the world. Imaginations of Venice shows selected photographs from Bürkle’s image archive. Her image architectures provide insights into Venice’s realities, showing the loop in which Venice is fixed, reproduced, reduced, and multiplied as a projection screen for diverse spatial imaginations.
272 pages, 288 color illustrations, hardcover, 24 x 30 cm.
Eating Venice Alive
02.08. – 11.10.2025
Koch Kunst Galerie & Catering
Ulrich Krauss
Brunnenstraße 9a
10119 Berlin
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.
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
Speaking in Pairs
February 5 – April 19, 2026
Speaking in Pairs, on view Spring 2026 in a gallery endowed by the Leubsdorf family, looks at the aesthetic, material, social, and political layers that portraits offer—revealing how the people they portray, their makers and viewers, and the changing world they exist in connect and conflict in shifting cycles over time.
Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
Hunter West Building
132 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10065
The exhibition on display at Schloss Britz explores the allure of the city of Venice. Selected exhibits from the late 19th century and contemporary perspectives serve to illustrate the universal perception of Venice – somewhere between romantic dream location and sensational over-tourism. Venice is once again – or still – at risk of perishing. This time, however, the city is also threatened by excessive globalised tourism, far-reaching gentrification and rising sea levels. In the discourse surrounding sustainability and soft tourism, the city has become a symbol of a hotly debated phenomenon in the media. And yet there are millions – if not billions – of people who romanticise this tourist hotspot.
By the 18th century, vedute and craft objects had become coveted souvenirs for aristocratic and upper- class travellers. Today, artists frequently Question the impact of globalisation and international tourism on the city’s identity.
Schloss Britz
Alt-Britz 73
12359 Berlin
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?
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
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
Venice BeReal, a board game developed by Stefanie Bürkle especially for the exhibition „Venice BeReal“, invites players to navigate the city’s layered realities through play. Players take on archtypical roles like the tourist, local investor, infkuencer, and art student, and naviagte multiple versions of venice shaped by luck, deception, and shifting narratives. Venice BeReal is available as an edition of 40.
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