Map in hand, away from the main sites of the Venice Biennale, there are a multitude of small exhibitions all over Venice, often in buildings which you wouldn’t normally have access to.  It’s impossible to visit them all, and some I have to admit I didn’t find, sometimes because, like the Cuba exhibition in the Palazzo Loredan, it had closed earlier in the summer.

Hidden away down a narrow street and through a small courtyard, the Palazzo Bollani dates back to the 17th century.  The building is now an arts centre with and the small traditional ground floor entrance hall gives little hint of the spacious light reception rooms on the first floor, now painted white, with many of the original architectural details remaining, and currently housing an exhibition of the work of Polish artist Ryszard Winiarski (1936-2006).

An artist, engineer, painter, stage designer and teacher, Winiarski’s work translates mathematics, statistics, coding, data and game theory into art, and, like data, it is all black and white, with little colour.   In the centre of the room are games which he designed in 1976 for visitors to explore their skills and create their own interactive links between mathematics, gaming and art, and here, because there are two players, the colour red is added to black and white.