Machines à Penser: Fondazione Prada, Venice. The Venice Biennale

The international exhibition 'Machines à Penser' at the Fondazione Prada in Venice, Italy is curated by the acclaimed curator and writer Dieter Roelstraete (MCA Chicago, Documenta Kassel, Germany, Prada Thought Council, currently Neubauer Collegium University of Chicago) and is part of the international Venice Biennale of Architecture, 26 May–25 November 2018. Through bringing together a number of artists' works, the exhibition explores the correlation between conditions of exile, escape and retreat and physical or mental places which favour reflection, thought and intellectual production.

'Machines à Penser' focuses on three major philosophers of the 20th century: Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The latter two shared a life-long need for intellectual isolation: Heidegger spent long periods of his life in a secluded hut in the village of Todtnauberg in the Black Forest in Germany, whilst Wittgenstein retreated on several occasions to a small mountain cabin situated in a fjord in Skjolden, Norway.

Moreton was invited to present fifteen artworks which included new practice-led research that re-visoned Nan Shepherd's 'views' of the landscape of the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland, through the depiction of the Scottish architectural vernacular 'fog house' in parallel to the philosophical mountain retreats (Wittgenstein and Heidegger) that are central to the curatorial themes in the exhibition presented at the Fondazione Prada. Moreton's new and existing photographic works depicting the landscape of Nan Shepherd's philosophical meditation 'The Living Mountain' and the ruins of Ludwig Wittgenstein's retreat in Skjolden, Norway were presented in the galleries of the Fondazione alongside Gerhard Richter's overpainted photographic works of the Swiss Engadine mountainscapes evoking Friedrich Nietzsche's 'thinking space' in Sils-Maria.

This is an academically researched exhibition of contemporary art that also includes works by internationally acclaimed artists Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Goshka Macuga (Turner Prize), Susan Philipsz (Turner Prize) Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alec Finlay, Sophie Nys, Mark Riley, Patrick Lakey, and Albrecht Dürer.