sustainable ice skating rink occupies palazzo diedo's frescoed banquet hall in venice

"Eisfeld II uses sustainable technology that simulates ice, allowing the rink to exist within the fragile setting of Palazzo Diedo's first-floor hall. Visitors are invited onto the surface, where skating becomes both a physical activity and a perceptual shift. A soundtrack accompanies the installation, heightening a sense of estrangement as sound, motion, and architectural ornament collide. The contrast between the Baroque frescoes and the engineered skating field foregrounds the tension between historical permanence and temporary, bodily experience."

"Olaf Nicolai introduces Eisfeld II: Enjoy / Survive to Palazzo Diedo in Venice, transforming the frescoed banqueting hall into a 100-square-meter skating rink. On view until February 22nd, 2026, the installation is presented by Berggruen Arts & Culture and coincides with the year of the Winter Olympics. Nicolai's project brings an unlikely form of movement into an enclosed, historic interior. Originally presented in 2001 at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, Eisfeld returns here in a reinterpreted form."

Eisfeld II: Enjoy / Survive installs a 100-square-meter synthetic skating rink in Palazzo Diedo's frescoed first-floor banqueting hall in Venice. Sustainable technology simulates ice, enabling skating within the fragile historic interior without damaging surfaces. Visitors are invited onto the surface, where physical movement produces a perceptual shift amplified by a soundtrack that heightens estrangement as sound, motion, and architectural ornament collide. Two lightboxes labeled ENJOY/SURVIVE (I & II) frame the work as a conceptual axis, reframing skating as both pleasure and precarious endurance. The project adapts a 2001 work for a new architectural context and questions institutional frames of participation, leisure, and spectacle.

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