Venus in a Landscape by Vadis Turner

Turner Courtyard

Formed from dining plates and braided bedsheets before it was cast in aluminum, Vadis Turner’s Venus in a Landscape references a sixteenth-century painting by Jacopo Palma il Vecchio. Unlike the Renaissance Venus, Turner’s depiction positions the Roman goddess of love upright, as if standing on her own two feet. Turner’s work often questions art-historical motifs such as the reclining female nude and the modernist grid that fills the interior of Venus’s silhouette. She sees the fusion of these two iconic forms, which are typically associated with male artists, as an act of reclamation.