16th Venice Architecture Biennale
The "Third Partner" at the Giardino
"The Third Partner" was presented by Beatriz Gerenstein during the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) and installed in the Giardino della Marinaressa, overlooking the Venice Lagoon near St. Mark's Square.
This monumental stainless-steel sculpture explores the invisible forces that connect people in love, friendship, and collaboration.
Through the powerful image of a three-ended knot reaching toward the sky, The Third Partner reflects on the mysterious energy that nurtures human relationships and allows meaningful connections to flourish.
The Third Partner, Stainless Steel, 2018. 10.2 x 10.8 x 2 feet (310 x 210 x 60 cm)
The Third Partner reflects Beatriz Gerenstein’s enduring exploration of human connection and the unseen forces that bring people together. At the center of the sculpture, three powerful forms converge in a polished knot. Two descend toward the ground, suggesting two individuals, while the third rises upward—a presence that is neither one nor the other, but the intangible force that allows a meaningful bond to exist.
For Gerenstein, relationships are never simply encounters between two people. Love, friendship, trust, empathy, and shared experience create something beyond the individuals themselves: a third presence, invisible yet essential. The sculpture gives physical form to this idea. Its central knot becomes a place of encounter, tension, dependence, and unity, while the three extending elements retain their individuality.
Created in monumental mirror-polished stainless steel, The Third Partner establishes a constantly changing relationship with its environment. Rather than separating the sculpture from the world around it, its reflective surface welcomes that world into the work. Sky, water, architecture, vegetation, passing visitors, and shifting light appear and disappear across its surface, transforming the sculpture throughout the day.
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Installed at the Giardino della Marinaressa during the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018, facing the Venetian Lagoon, the work entered into a particularly powerful dialogue with its surroundings. The openness of the garden, the movement of the water, and the changing Venetian light became part of the sculpture itself.
As viewers approached and saw their own reflections momentarily absorbed into its polished surface, they too became participants in the work.
In this setting, The Third Partner expands beyond the relationship between two individuals. It becomes a meditation on interconnectedness—between one person and another, between the individual and the community, and between human presence and the world we inhabit. What begins with two ultimately becomes something larger: a connection capable of creating a new and shared reality.