The Venice Art Biennale is regarded as the most significant art exhibitions in the world. With artists and designers from across the globe showcasing their work, co-founders of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery were moved to wonder "What defines an artwork?" "Why can artworks not be functional?" and "When does design become art?" For Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard these questions led them to stage their immersive exhibition called DYSFUNCTIONAL. The collaborative exhibition will feature 17 artists from their gallery roster to participate in a collaborative dialogue between the artists' works and the mesmerizing architecture of Ca'd'Oro. Also known as the Palazzo Santa Sofia, this 589-year old palace sits along the Grand Canal in Venice. Using the palace as a counterpart to the featured works, the exhibition allows for rising and established artists to intersect the boundaries of art, architecture and design.

Using the Ca'd'Oro's collection of Italian and Flemish design the Carpenters Workshop Gallery aims to "forget function whilst celebrating the power of artistic expression. The idea of dysfunction, defined as ‘the disruption of normal social relations’, invites visitors to rethink the conventional relationship between form and function, art and design, the historical and the modern." 

Participants such as Studio Drift, Vincenzo De Cotis, Atelier Van Lieshout, and Virgil Abloh are four of the 17 artists who will be showcasing their work within the Ca'd'Oro. Studio Drift's work, Fragile Future, aims at blending nature and technology into a vivid light sculpture through a three dimensional bronze sculpture accented with real dandelion glued together to emit light. According to the design duo Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Studio Drift the project is a "distinct mix between high-tech and poetic imagery in which light functions as a symbolic and emotional ingredient. Fragile Future III is about conveying emotion and at the same time refers to the fact that light lies at the basis of all life."

Carpenters Workshop Gallery explain the artist's works "will draw on the artistic heritage of the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’d’Oro, which features masterpieces such as Andrea Mantegna’s San Sebastian, Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion, Van Dyck’s Portrait of Marcello Durazzo, Francesco Guardi’s Views of Venice and Bernini’s sculptures, including two terracotta models for his Fountain of the Four Rivers." 

The exhibition is set to create an immersive visual journey which blends art and design through Venice's rich design heritage. The exhibition will be featured from May 8th - November 24th at the Venice Biennale.