La Biennale di Venezia
In the art world, Venice’s every-other-year contemporary art show, the Biennale, is, I guess, well-known. As I am not one in said world, I’d never heard of it (but I had heard of the film festival that is part of it), but when I discovered it was happening this year, I was quite excited. I found out about it while searching for anything cool in the area for the summer visit by Mom and her friend, ArtsyFartsy. This was the jackpot as far as ArtsyFartsy was concerned.
One of the nice things about the Biennale is that is a long exhibit. The art portion (there is also a drama/dance portion and the film festival) went from June through November (it finishes up this weekend). There’s more than can be seen in a day or two, so being able to return is pretty handy. I was lucky enough to go four times, each time with a different friend. Still, even with the multiple trips, I missed quite a bit.
Another cool thing about the Biennale is its location. Obviously Venice
rocks, but there are two main places for the exhibition, the Giardini and the Arsenale. These are at the fish-tale end of Venice, which is not usually overrun with tourists. The both have unique characteristics that you don’t get elsewhere in Venice. The Giardini is, as it sounds, in the midst of green space. A large park and playground is adjacent; more grass, less piazze. The Arsenale location is part of the old shipyard, so it is very old-worldy industrial-like (that’s an architectural term, isn’t it?).
In addition to the main exhibition spots, throughout the islands of Venice are “collateral events” with art from a country in some usually unused flat. Oh, and the random sculpture (or submarine) located along the Grand Canal was a nice touch as well.
Ok, so the Biennale is, as previously mentioned, contemporary art, which is not the usual art form around these parts. And I have missed it! Don’t pounce on me—I’m not about to complain about the abundance of medieval and renaissance art and architecture; I’m just saying a little random weirdness is also good. And when you put contemporary random weirdness in the location of Venetian beauty, well, it’s freaking awesome! (Didn’t I already come to this conclusion in my Villa Pisani post? Well, it bears reiterating.)
As you may have noticed, I do not have an extensive art vocabulary. Nonetheless, I’m going to attempt to verbalize a few thoughts on some of pieces/works/installations and share what I can of the ones I most liked. Try not to be too judgmental. (I may also use some pics taken by Mom & ArtsyFartsy since both have a better eye and camera than I do. AND, quite critically, my camera battery died early into my first visit. I didn’t ask permission; I’m just going to count on their love and forgiveness.) I’ll also try to credit the artists when I think I can figure out who they are (I actually tried to take notes, but that lasted all of 12 minutes).
Let’s start at the biggest portion of the exhibit, the Giardini. Notice ArtsyFartsy’s grin. Not sure about the graffiti-looking bit on the sign—I think that is actual graffiti, but I don’t know.
This is Chen Zhen’s piece welcoming you into the garden. The whole title of La Biennale was Making Worlds, or rather Fare Mondi. This sculpture is called “back to fullness, face to emptiness.” It’s all neon Chinese (I think?) characters in the middle.
Throughout the space are multiple “pavilions,” buildings for countries to exhibit one or more artists. Then there is the Exposition Palace, a large building that was more like a regular art museum than anything else there. One of the coolest works was in the biggest room of the Palazzo. These string (actually more like cable) balls are by Argentinean Tomas Saraceno. Entitled: “galaxies forming along filaments, like droplets along the strands of a spider's web.” This was a fun room to be in, but not one in which you could wander aimlessly. It’s hard to show the scale of artwork with a little camera, but I think this picture does an ok job of it.
The most disturbing piece I saw, hands down, was in the room directly behind this one. Swedish Nathalie Djurberg’s “Experimentet” is a nightmare, and I feel slightly violated having seen it (of course, I couldn’t wait to show Louisiana Gal it when I returned in October, so, uh, it was also effective?). The room was dark and there was farily loud, sinerstly playful music playing. There are these large, funky wax-like flowers and plants throughout, which are kinda pretty,
and maybe also a little phallic,
So you’re walking through here, and it is weird. And creepy. And you notice a video screen playing cartoons—or claymation. Fun, right? No. Disturbing as hell. I will not go into the levels of wrongness in these videos (there were actually three screens, each with a loop of different trauma-inducing actions), but if you want just a hint of the chill factor, check out this clip. If you want to watch a particularly disturbing section, check out this. (BUT NOT if you are squemish or if we ever attended church together when I was a child. Or maybe if you voted Republican lately.). Oh! Nahalie Djurberg won the Silver Lion award for a Promising Young Artist; and ArtsyFartsy loved this one—she really does know what she’s talking about.
A couple more things from the main building. I liked these stretched plastic bags holding colored liquid hanging across the room (sorry, no idea whose they are). Not sure what is going on with the light bulbs in the sandbox though.
This was showing a film, but the film wasn’t as interesting as the projector that was this long, spiral do-hicky (I think the film was just showing them putting this thing together).
There was plenty of other cool things here that I thought I had more pictures of, but I thought wrong. Here’s a clip of Hans-Peter Feldmann’s clever “Shadow Play,” which I wish I’d gotten some pictures of. Oh, here’s the entrance to the café in the Palazzo and a cool picture of a picture-taking ArtsyFartsy, taking a picture of her daughter. This was captured by Mom.
The 29 pavillions around the Giardini were built by the participating countries, and I guess most of the time they are locked up and empty. There are a wide variety of buildings. Here are a few pictures of some of the pavillions. The first one is Hungary (which had an art exhibit revolving around prisoners of war); the next is, as can be seen from the writing, Russia.
This was on the side of the Russian pavillion (by Sergei Shekhovtsov). Kinda cool.
Inside, this piece, “Black Hole” by Anatoly Shuravlev, was pretty. Just a black room and hanging crystal balls (although I think I read they were plastic) casting bits of light around. Then when you closely at the balls, you see a little black and white photo.
I guess I should have paid more attention to the U.S. pavilion, which won the Golden Lion for best National Participation. I think the whole pavilion was the work of Bruce Nauman, who is well-known (and I can say that because I had even seen a piece of his in the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg the week prior; of course, I’d never heard of him previously. But the point is, I remember seeing his work—I sure as hell don’t remember the name or art of every artist I see. He works with neon lights, so he kinda sticks out.). But there was a line and only a certain amount of people were allowed in at one time, and we didn’t have the patience to wait. Plus, I thought we could see the majority of it right there on the outside of the building, as seen here (there were neon word pairs, like “temperance” and “gluttony,” that took turns flashing along the top; called “Vices and Virtues” but it’s not new—it’s from 1983-88). I wasn’t particularly wowed by this (although it is clever). After some research on the web, though, I see that there might have been some cool stuff inside that I would have liked better. Oh well.
I really liked the Egyptian pavilion (although it was really a section of a long building that housed the “pavilions” of five countries), especially the work of Ahmed El Askalany. Here are some of his palm leaf weaved creations:
In front of that long, five-country pavilion, is an instalation of Dale Chihuly works, which, like I imagine everything of his to be, is spectacular.
I’ll end this portion of blogging with one of my favorites: the bizarre “Windswept Women” by Miwa Yanagi. You know something is up with this exhibit before you even walk in because the Japan pavilion is covered in a giant black tent.
Inside, there are four (I think) giant—I mean floor to ceiling—photos of dancing women with circus-freaky breasts. Here are two:
There was also a smaller black tent with a (too-long, I thought) video of a black tent with legs (people inside) walking around (and around and around) in a windy desert. Finally, the tent stops, and the four women come outside and start dancing and swinging those crazy dangles (they’re actually part of the garment, but it does take a minute to figure that out). You have to bend down or sit on the floor to see the video playing inside the little tent. Anyways, I thought it was cool.
posted by travelingidahogirl @ 7:07 PM
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