Venice, Italy: The Ghost Performance Skin

The Ghost Performance Skin Comes to Venice

Barreletics will reveal a new design, the Ghost, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello this October, during ITSLIQUID's group exhibition CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2026.

VENICE, Italy. Barreletics, the company behind Performance Skin, has been invited by ITSLIQUID to take part in CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2026, the 19th edition of its international group exhibition, from October 16 to 30, 2026. The exhibition is ITSLIQUID's own, presented with ACIT Venice inside one of the most well-known Renaissance palaces in Venice during the autumn months of Biennale Arte 2026, and it is where Barreletics will give the first look at the Ghost.

For a company that began in a barre studio, it is a remarkable address. Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello has stood on its canal for five centuries, passing between noble Venetian families, collecting frescoes and stuccos, and in recent decades opening its rooms to contemporary art. This October those same rooms become the setting for the Ghost's first appearance.

A Renaissance palace on the Fondamenta Sant'Andrea

Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello stands at Cannaregio 4118 on the Fondamenta Sant'Andrea, near the Ca' d'Oro and the Scuola della Misericordia, with a public landing at its entrance and a private garden within its walls. Its facade gives away its age: a four-light window opening onto a balcony, flanked by pairs of single windows, each crowned by an arch with a finely moulded frame. Those details date the building, according to Giuseppe Cristinelli's 1987 study of the Cannaregio district, to the first years of the 1500s.

According to ACIT Venice, the palace was built in the 16th century by the Contarini family. Among its first owners were the Capello, a family originally from Capua, which is why its members were known as the "Capuelli." Over the centuries the Capello counted ambassadors, senators, procurators, captains general of the sea and heads of the Council of Ten among their number. The palace later passed to the Albrizzi as part of a dowry, when Elena Capello married Giuseppe Albrizzi, joining it to a family of merchants who traded above all in olive oil bought in Puglia and the Greek islands.

Inside, the building follows the plan of the Venetian casa fondaco, the merchant house, with an elegant portego, the long central hall, running between side rooms. The main salon of the piano nobile is decorated with stuccos of the Ticinese school and frescoes of the school of Tiepolo. Four large wall frescoes tell stories from antiquity: Iphigenia in Aulis with Achilles, Iphigenia in Tauris with her brother Orestes, Cincinnatus about to receive the insignia of dictator, and Coriolanus met by his wife Volumnia and his mother Veturia as he prepares to march on Rome. Overhead, Venus presides over one lunette, the Virtues triumph over the Vices in the central tondo, and a merchant holding the caduceus of Mercury stands for the trade that built the family's fortune. One ceiling figure was reconstructed in the twentieth century after damage from an Austrian air raid.

Beside the portego, the Sala della Pace is hung with damask and crowned by a ceiling by Guarana depicting the Triumph of Love, in which Mercury, Jupiter and Minerva gather beneath Venus and Cupid as doves are released across the sky. A small music room adds a painted Venus escorted by putti and Murano chandeliers. The interiors were remodelled toward the end of the eighteenth century to follow the fashion of the time, while keeping what the palace's own history calls a harmonious rigor.

From noble residence to exhibition house

Today the palace is home to ACIT Venice, the Italian-German Cultural Association, founded in 1971 at the request of the German Consulate General in Milan together with the Venice Chamber of Commerce, and a Goethe-Institut examination center. ACIT has worked with institutions across the city, including Teatro La Fenice and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and since 1993 the palace has hosted collective, solo and retrospective art exhibitions. ITSLIQUID describes it as one of the most well-known palaces of the Renaissance in Venice, a place where restored Old Masters' frescoes and contemporary work share the same rooms.

ITSLIQUID first brought its own festivals to the palace in 2014, with MORPHOS and FUTURE IDENTITIES, and Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello is now at the center of its Venice program. In 2026 alone it has hosted VISIONS, part of the ANIMA MUNDI ART FAIR, in July and the 25th edition of the Venice International Art Fair in September, with CONTEMPORARY VENICE to follow in October.

Who ITSLIQUID is

ITSLIQUID was founded in 2001 by Luca Curci, an Italian architect, artist and designer born in Bari, who also leads the studio Luca Curci Architects. Its name draws on the idea of liquid architecture, and ITSLIQUID describes itself as based on fluidity, motion, connection and accessibility, with a mission it states simply: making contemporary art accessible to all. What began as an online platform for calls, exhibitions and events now reaches more than 300,000 subscribers across the international art, architecture and design world.

According to ITSLIQUID, it has organized more than 350 international events involving over 10,000 artists in more than 60 venues, across Italy, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, France and beyond, with exhibition spaces in Venice, Rome, London and Barcelona. Its projects have reached institutions including the CCCB in Barcelona, the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow, MuMo in Prague and the MUST Museum in Lecce, and through its partnership with Sedition it has presented work by Bill Viola and Refik Anadol.

Barreletics and ITSLIQUID

The relationship began on the page. In June 2026, ITSLIQUID published a feature on Barreletics that treated Performance Skin as a design story as much as a performance one, following the idea that a familiar studio object could be reconsidered from the foot outward. The invitation to CONTEMPORARY VENICE takes that conversation off the page and into the palace.

This year's exhibition explores the evolving relationship between the body and the spaces we inhabit, through two curated sections, MIXING IDENTITIES and FUTURE LANDSCAPES, bringing together painting, photography, video, sculpture, installation and live performance. For a design that exists at the point where the body meets a surface, the theme is a natural fit, and the frescoed rooms of a Renaissance palace make an unexpected and fitting stage for footwear that began in a barre studio.

The Ghost

The news Barreletics brings to Venice is the Ghost, a new design that will be revealed for the first time at CONTEMPORARY VENICE. Barreletics will share the details in Venice, and until the palace doors open, the Ghost stays under wraps. For Barreletics, the reveal is the next chapter of the thinking that shaped Performance Skin: begin with the foot, question the familiar object and let the answer determine the form.

A design the world notices

Venice is the latest step for a design that a growing list of international fashion and design names has taken notice of. In October 2025, the limited Barreletics × Coperni Closed Sole walked the Coperni Spring/Summer 2026 runway in Paris, with Vogue and Numéro both writing about the footwear. INTERNI, the Milan design magazine founded in 1954, featured Barreletics in its pages, and ITSLIQUID followed with its own feature this year. In retail, Free People carries Barreletics through FP Movement, and Closed Sole Performance Skin is coming to Anthropologie for Fall 2026.

It began with the foot

Barreletics began in founder Stefanie Miller's barre practice. Barre and Pilates had evolved enormously, from the sophistication of the equipment to the precision of the movement, yet the standard answer to traction was still a sock with grip applied to the fabric underneath. Miller saw two points of movement in that design: the foot moving inside the sock, and the sock moving against the surface. Barreletics calls this the Double Failure, and rather than adding more grip to a sock, Miller asked whether the sock needed to be part of the solution at all.

Performance Skin is her answer. Its 360° grip is engineered into the material itself, and dedicated left and right forms follow the shape of the foot while the toes stay completely free to move and splay naturally. Open Sole takes the idea to its most minimal expression, leaving the heel and toes exposed. Closed Sole covers the bottom of the foot for additional underfoot protection while keeping the toes free. No latex. No silicone. Every pair is designed and manufactured in Michigan, USA.

Stable enough to grip. Sensitive enough to feel. Free enough to move.

For Miller, taking that idea from a Michigan barre studio into a Venetian palace is part of the same story: a familiar object questioned, and a new form allowed to follow.

Venice in Biennale season

October in Venice is still Biennale season. La Biennale di Venezia opened its first International Art Exhibition in the Giardini di Castello on April 30, 1895, and for more than 130 years the exhibition has returned every two years as one of the most important art exhibitions in the world. The 61st edition, In Minor Keys, conceived by the curator Koyo Kouoh and carried out by La Biennale with the team she selected after her death in May 2025, runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026 at the Giardini, the Arsenale and venues across the city, with 100 National Participations and 31 Collateral Events. CONTEMPORARY VENICE is ITSLIQUID's own exhibition, presented in the city during these months.

Exhibition details

Exhibition: CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2026, 19th edition
Organized by: ITSLIQUID Group, in collaboration with ACIT Venice
Venue: Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Cannaregio 4118, Venice, Italy
Dates: October 16 to 30, 2026

About Barreletics

Barreletics was founded by Stefanie Miller and began in her barre practice. The company makes Performance Skin, studio footwear for barre and Pilates with 360° grip engineered into the material and toes left free, available in Open Sole and Closed Sole. Performance Skin is designed and manufactured in Michigan, USA. Learn more at barreletics.com.

About ITSLIQUID

ITSLIQUID Group is an international contemporary art platform founded in 2001 by Luca Curci. It connects artists, curators, galleries, institutions and creative professionals through exhibitions, art fairs, festivals, competitions and editorial projects, with exhibition spaces in Venice, Rome, London and Barcelona. Learn more at itsliquid.com.