Country: Italian Pavilion

Artist: Multiple Artists 

Curator: Vittorio Sgarbi

Venue: Arsenale, Padiglione Italia, Tese and Giardino delle Vergini

Considering the sheer mass of artists in the Italian pavilion, it would be nothing short of inappropriate to try to ‘summarise’ the genres on display (and rather time-consuming). Work in multiple media is stacked, layered and crammed into the Italian pavilion on curved shelving to ensure the maximum space is utilised. Thus, like any exhibition featuring such a diverse range of artists, cohesion is the primary downfall of this presentation. And while this year coincidentally is the 150th anniversary of Italy’s unification as a country (with many artists choosing to reference in their artworks), no overarching theme comes through explicitly to the overwhelmed viewer.

While summation is impossible, a notable strand of derivation from the world of ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance pervades, in some cases leading to a repetition of models – two works both relying openly on Mantegna’s Dead Christ lead to shockingly similar artistic conclusions. These tend to be hit-or-miss, and rather than wade through the incoherent jumble, I would recommend spending time in the only cohesively effective section, the ‘museo della mafia’ section which occupies the suspended wooden platform.

This dark, oppressive environment chronicles the history of the mafia, and includes artistic interpretations of the subject. While a disturbing series of exhibits, this is a necessary counterweight to some of the optimistically naïve celebrations of Italy’s 150 years – and manages to leave a far deeper impression than the multiple green, white and red-coloured works that derive their sole meaning from those invested in the Italian flag.

1 year ago  4 notes

Title: The Heard and the Unheard - Soundscape Taiwan

Artists: Wang Hong-Kai, Su Yu-Hsien

Curator: Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan

Venue: Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209 (San Marco)

The Heard and the Unheard: Soundscape Taiwan in the Palazzo delle Prigioni offers an intriguing alternative to the visual art-centric exhibits composing much of the Biennale. Instead, what one encounters on entering is a room filled with comfortable seats and headphones. Rather than the visual, auditory stimuli provide the experience here, as the exhibit focuses on both the music and other ‘noises’ that form the soundscape of Taiwan.

Playing through the headphones in the ‘Sound Library/Bar’ are songs, either politically or socially-orientated, which form a historical context for the rest of the exhibition. Recycled furniture is placed invitingly around the space, offering the listener a place to sit and take in the atmosphere. While much of this music will pose a problem to foreign speakers, this language barrier does in some ways allow the music to become an abstract representation of the issues considered by the songwriters.

However the exhibit also features two other major works. Hong-Kai Wang’s Music While We Work is a video similarly exploring the social spheres of Taiwanese society through sound, but via a less direct, lyric-driven approach. For this project, Wang invited retired sugar-factory workers in her home town to re-visit their former workplace, and personally record the sounds of their old environment. In post-production these sounds were then edited, allowing the resulting work to combine both the original soundscape and its artistic interpretation. Sounds of Nothing by Yu-Hsien Su, on the other hand, relates more to the initial Sound Library, with the musical traditions of ordinary people explored through subtitled videos.

As an experience, the relegation of the visual here does make for an interesting experience within the Biennale context. Being primarily focused on sound and music, this exhibition gently reminds the viewer that there is more to life than ‘looking’.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago  1 note

Title: Starie Novosti (Old News)

Artist: Organization: Anastasia Khoroshilova

Curator: Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Venue: Biblioteca del Temanza, Dorsoduro 1602, Collateral Event

Taking as its subject matter the 2004 terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia, Starie Novosti is not an easy exhibition to encounter. Despite featuring nine large-scale portraits of mothers taken hostage during the crisis, the exhibition has a definite installation feel, as huge containers are propped open to allow a view of the women inside. Yet opposite these detailed prints, news footage of the conflict plays on small television screens, also contained within the box. These oppressive ‘cabinets’ give a sinister edge to the works, as one has the impression that when the doors closed these mothers – many of whom lost their children during the event – will be forced to stare at this footage forever.

And yet while one can sense immediately that the resonance of that terrorism will last with those women forever, at the same time this exhibition deals with the generally fickle public imagination after such a crisis. For the rest of the population, i.e. those not directly affected by the events, the 2004 deaths are now history, no longer a day-to-day burden. The cargo-like nature of these boxes thus draws attention to this unfortunate (but perhaps inescapable) consequence of time passing, as one again has the sensation that these distressing events have been ‘packed up’ in society’s memory, to be filed away and forgotten along with those involved. Khoroshilova’s installation, then, is like peering into a forgotten collection of past tragedy – but still manages, through the conjunction of video and photograph – to make these events fresh and affecting once more.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago 

Title: Mexico, Cuadrado rojo, rosa imposible (Red Square Impossible Pink)

Artist: Melanie Smith, Rafael Ortega

Curator: José Luis Barrios Lara

Venue: Palazzo Rota-Ivancich, Castello 4421

 

An ambitiously-worded press release may have greeted you on discovering Red Square Impossible Pink at the Mexican Pavilion. For example, this exhibition declares one of its intentions to tackle ‘the issue of the transformation of utopias as artistic projections into heterotopias as productions of social and political experience in Latin America’. However, this mixed-media exposition in the Palazzo Rota Ivancich does prove rather more accessible than its rather impenetrable description may suggest.

The series of Bulto videos, for example, focus on absurdly large, fuchsia-pink packages transplanted into some commonplace scenarios. And as one watches the figures struggle to move these objects, strapped to vehicles or dragged through post-office queues, one is simultaneously aware both of the juxtaposition of the nonsensical and the quotidian – but also the burdens one places on others, and how they attempt to navigate around these obstacles. As metaphors for the structures of modern interactions, these packages illuminate the everyday procedures of society by displaying the converse – farcical scenarios created within the artistic sphere causing trouble for their participants. In an extension of the project, the ‘Package’ mass was also transported to Venice for five days, extending the scope of this problematic blockade to a city where navigation is already hindered by multiple waterways, here specifically illuminating the complications of modernity in an outdated etting.

Furthermore, Smith’s wholly immersive environment manages to envelop the viewer in a space where art and reality overlap, allowing both the fulfilment of the conceptual framework articulated in the press release, as well as a successful, engaging experience for the viewer. Whether it is the collaborative (but cacophonous) creation of seminal images in the video Estadio Azteca, Proeza Maleable, or the physical paintings merging with the interior decoration of the Palazzo, Smith’s work manages to be artistically and socially relevant – regardless of whether one understands every pronouncement of its accompanying statement or not.

Jennifer Owen

Interview with Melanie Smith

Questions by Denise Kwan and Jennifer Owen

How has your relocation to Mexico influenced your practice, and in what way has it influenced your perception of culture?

My moving to Mexico implied a 180 degree shift in my approach to making and thinking about art.  As an art student formalism and minimalism were important influences, whereas in Mexico I was immediately taken with the baroque elaboration of the city itself and structures of power, and the way in which abstraction fitted in in Mexico was very different to my mind. There is a sort of corruption and bending of minimalist forms here that cannot be avoided. It is not a culture of reductionism, totally the opposite, and so these were two counterpositions that I have always worked with : the impossibility of the insertion of the history of art from a European perspective into the living experience in Latin America. Being from England, one of the biggest colonial countries of the world, has also marked my experience in Mexico. I’m interested in the post-colonial debate, but as an idea that fragments culture, and something that can speak of histories in a more complex way than just periphery versus centre.

How does the role of collaboration function in your practice?

Rafael and I collaborate on the the film productions, and I have a separate practice in the studio, but the two are interconnected and most of the images of the paintings come from filmic ideas or sometimes even as precursors to film projects. Rafael comes from film and his framing and timing are some of the most vital elements of the films, without losing the pictorial sense which is where I come from. But Rafa also works with other artistas and I think this sets us aside from a normal pair of artists. I think our independence is important to the input of the projects; the fact that there is always some external input is key. I’m even interested in the idea of collaborating with curators or writers and right now I’m working on a project with a friend who works in restauration. We are interested in that breaking down of barriers which may not necessarily happen as a full-time dual team.

Ideas of anonymity and identification within places appear in your work, could you explain your ideas? 

There is always a reference to the body in my work, but as you say in a very anonymous way. This is clear in the video work of Spiral city for example, - the city becomes the anonymous, post human body – the same applies to Tianguis II – there is always an off-frame, almost spectral, quality. Aztec Stadium also clearly brings together the collective ordered body that dissolves into chaos – or the mass as  a revolutionary force that has the potential to tear apart the frame. I think the anonymity has more to do with the action happening off the frame or somewhere else – an almost fugitive quality which eludes  explanation. But I think it’s something I’m looking for in the work. This fugitiveness leads to the idea of heterotopic place assuming its own quality.  Xilitla for example is a very off-the-map place that assumes its own irrationality, and non-functionality. I think this identification of places that you mention is about the impossibility of representation – the places I choose are perhaps  part of a larger concern about abstraction.

Some may argue that abstracted art and politics are distinctly separate; how do you view their roles with one another?

For me they can respond to each other, and more importantly agency runs between them. Perhaps it’s easier to see it inversely: I do not see the function of art to be some sort of moral consciousness of politics and neither do I think of abstraction being purely about abstraction. In the best of cases the intersection of the two should open up a third space, but not a space that necesarily gives answers. A common thread in my work for example is the boundary between the physical frame (as in painting) and its extension into the political frame and a re-reading of formal structures or abstraction in social/public space. This is evident in the last scene of the Aztec Stadium where Malevich’s Red Square, already divided in a thousand small rectangles by the students stunt cards, is dispersed all over the football pitch into a sort of irresolute provocation, doubting the purity of the square.

Do you feel the relocation of the ‘Package’ to Venice radically altered or extended the concept beyond its initial staging in Mexico? How, if at all, did you feel this changed the meaning of this project?

Jose Luis and I talked a lot about how this project could insert into the context of Venice. Infact the Bulto (package) was first presented, and shot, in Lima, as a 43 minute film, but this, we decided would have been too long for Venice, particularly as there were already two other film works. So we decided to fracture and edit certain scenes, placed on monitors throughout the palazzo that the spectator would walk through with. Also there was a simultaneous action on the opening days of the Biennale – whereby we took the Bulto through the small streets of Venice, around the Palazzo. It was used as a kind of blockage device amongst all the tourists and locals and day to day movements within the city. People did get angry when they found that they couldn’t pass in certain streets, and in a way it was about that. On certain occasions I went out with the two people who were carrying the Bulto, and I could see people looking and asking themselves what was that thing, and what was inside. I think the Bulto has its own agency and this was one of the points we wanted to explore in Venice. In Lima people automatically associated the Bulto as a bomb, going back to the threat of terrorism. In Venice I think it we used it more as a subliminal signage for the Pavilion and also to make reference to the way in which the Bulto was just going round and round on itself in the laberinths of Venice – a kind of parallel narrative between the Italian and Latin American experience of circulation and chaos.

How important is the context of the Palazzo Rota Ivancich to these works? Were they specifically created for the space or merely situated there after their creation?

I think the Palazzo becomes like a big installation for the exhibition. No, the works weren’t made for the space but – particularly in the case of Xilitla and the paintings there was a fortunate mimesis between the space and the conceptual origins within the work. The paintings looked like they had been made for the space (they are actually part of a series that links to the video projects) as there was a constant dialogue between the wallpaper and the way the paintings sunk in to their backgound. Sound was an important factor. We had to isolate the electric guitar of the Aztec Stadium from the rest of the space, hence the double door entrance and exit to the piece, but this helped the sensation of delirium and isolation from the rest of the installation upstairs which really worked as a mimetic representation within the decadence of Venice. We really worked on the walk-through of the exhibition, together with Rafael – the sensorial experience of the  whole space was really important, hence the different colours and temperatures, together with the sound led the viewer into the melancholic space of Xilitla at the end of the show.

Was the curation of the space a collaborative effort for the Biennale?

Jose Luis and I have worked together over the last couple of years on the production of the Aztec Stadium. This was an enormous piece that took over a year to produce and finally make happen. So over that time frame we talked a lot about common threads in my work and concepts that had been interesting him in his work. I had also been working on Xilitla with another curator Paola Santascoy, in a similar way for a long time. So they are projects and ideas that had been brewing for a while, but their insertion in the Palazzo was crucial in taking the projects out of a local condition. Finally I think they way in which they function is all set off by the projects’ juxtaposition with the Palazzo as a decadent European ruin. In a way I think it was a culmination of a series of ideas from both of us that came together at one moment. 

Your work at times shares concerns – primarily those related to modernity – with the work of Francis Alÿs; do you feel there is a dialogue between your artistic investigations and Alÿs’ work?

Yes, we have known each other for over twenty years and there is a strong connection of where the works come from and at the same time the critique, not to mention that we both work with Rafael. We have worked in the same city and there are connections I think in the way in which we go about the investigation of a project or subject, and the perhaps our pictorial interest, although my interest in painting stems back to the avant–garde as a trigger more than anything else. Fundamentally I think Francis’ work goes from him, as a subject, to the exterior, and mine goes from the exterior to the subject or interior, and I’m thinking about abstraction in quite a different way. Francis’ work has more concerns with the failure of modernism, whereas,  particularly in the Biennale presentation, my work is more concerned with fragmentation as a kind of constellation of modernism; slippage, grey areas and circulation are all important to me. It’s less about periphery and more about alterity. 

1 year ago  4 notes

Title: Lithuania, Behind the White Curtain

Artist: Darius Mikšys

Venue: Scuola S. Pasquale, Castello 2786

The concept behind the Lithuanian pavilion is, arguably, more important than the works on display – but therein lies its brilliance. Consisting of works by multiple artists, the concept ensures that (unlike similar, artistically-diverse exhibitions) the presentation remains strikingly lucid and approachable.

Faced with the challenge of representing an entire country, Darius Miksys (responsible for the concept), invited artists who had received an artistic grant from the government to submit a work from the period the endowment covered. Yet rather than display these works simultaneously in Venice, Miksys’ concept – Behind the White Curtain – extends the scope of Lithuania’s presence at the Biennale to question traditional museum presentations by heightening viewer participation and choice.

On entering, one is subjected to a rather sparse, gallery-like environment, with the majority of works stored behind the eponymous curtain. In front of the curtain, a temporary display of works is placed according to the whims of visitors to the space. Catalogues line the edges of the room, and once asked, staff will collect the works for the viewer and place them according to their specific wishes. The spectator then is empowered, resulting in both a very exciting, but also very unusual experience.

Such a level of decision-making usually rests with invisible chief-curators, so naturally this setup does take some getting used to – but in the immediate contemporary context, with museums competing ever-more ferociously for the attention of visitors in a world full of choice, the concept here is right up-to-date. Here, the typical exhibiting processes are reconfigured along the model of a selection-based interface where the visitor has complete control, questioning the relation of the viewer to the collection or institution and giving control to the primary consumer themselves. 

 

1 year ago 

Title: Latvia, Artificial Peace (Contemporary Landscape)

Artist: Kristaps Gelzis

Curator: Astrida Rogule

Venue: Palazzo Albrizzi, Cannaregio 4118

If one attempted to describe the characteristics of the Republic of Latvia’s Pavilion at the Biennale, it would be necessary to mention both “neon” and “fluorescent lighting”. Not phrases one might immediately associate with an exhibition entitled Artificial Peace, but all the same, Kristaps Ģelzis’ painted works remain astonishingly serene.

Introduced by a large-scale text work that hints little at the vibrant hues dominating the canvases beyond it, the principal room in the Palazzo Albrizzi is deliberately dark, allowing the lighting to transform the walls into a glowing panorama. The effect as a whole, with radiant vistas suggestive of dawn, midday and dusk, is rather surreal, as the neon does not detract but rather enhances the immediacy of the works. Although the colour scheme could easily have become garish, instead this signals a contemporary atmosphere within these landscapes, fulfilling the title’s promise to be ‘artificial.

While aspiring to little more than this transformation, and the creation of an electric vision of landscape both awakening and calming the viewer, Artificial Peace successfully transports the viewer, however temporarily, into a wholly immersive environment.

Elliott Goat interviews Kristaps Gelzis:

Elliott Goat: In an interview in 1993 you reiterated “the individual handicrafts must not be lost in contemporary expression, since they stay in mind for a long time.” Despite working in new digital media do you still feel the artist craft and hand are still paramount to his/her practice?

Kristaps Ģelzis: Even more. I feel tired of overwhelming amount of works created with methods of borderless brainstorming, to come out with arty “message” projects on A4, adding excel document with production costs. Latter in case of fortunate art promoter, passing it to craftsmen team. Frequently such an execution ruins my expectations. These art facts can be nicely read in seconds, quick access to the point with help of inner imagination, no particular need for real touch. As a professional of longer experience you feel a lack of particular need to see it. You can smartly pass the artwork idea further through “word of mouth” or spend 2 seconds on checking the documentation on the Internet. Yes, it works. I got it! Especially in Big scale. Thick books with annotations help with interpretations. Very contemporary.

This is sad. This is now too simple to me. Well-settled office work. Even in Big scale majority of cases I see only A4. I lose the artist’s personality; I see only calculations and play with impersonal context without the belief of true experience. Artists get anonymous, employees of industry. Also it sounds boring, but extremely contemporary.

Van Gogh was right- there is no need for ears to paint. Pain is needed! That is priceless action, pure individual. The way you buy more time for your art. Maximum personal presence, whatever media.

EG: From your days of Art and Film in the late 1980s what is your relationship to the urban setting? Following on from that, you have stated that the space where the exhibition is held is always most important. How does working in the rarefied atmosphere of the biennale affect the way your work is read?

KG: For me space is an undisputable part of my background. From the first day I have lived surrounded with people who organize air around me. My father was an architect, later also my older brother. Urban issues have always been a main menu in my visual and esthetical education. Despite to my protest against family tradition, choosing artists profession, I cannot escape from automatic habit restructuring the surrounding I have seen. Even if it is a simple painting, I always target the imaginary place or wall first, before creating the idea. That for sure raises some limitations in creative thinking. Later finding escape you expand it to structuring human material.

The same happened with the artwork in Venice. It was supposed to be for a large step, more dramatic. It was my strong feeling at home, but the outcome is infected with Venice city relaxing viruses. Honestly I’m happy that I used this opportunity. That strengthens the reason, why I was there. I could not prolong my political, economical etc. discomfort and emotionally export it. Because I did the whole painting on the exhibition spot.  For many reasons there was not second painting shot possible.

I had to do it right, using the available energy of surrounded context.  And as you can imagine, I seriously rebuilt the exhibition space, of course. Stage set matters to obtain the wished interpretation and emotional setup.

EG: In specific regards to your exhibition ARTifical Peace, how has your relationship with censorship changed given the varying contexts and changing settings your work has been viewed in over the past years?

KG: I lately have a feeling of serious revision in my creative “parking place”. Reason can be taking care of different auditory one can meet. It remains an important issue to me. In my position social activity, opinion statement is more fertile towards local, well known, targeted surrounding. Participating in the Biennale is professional and an art specific exercise to any present artists. Logically this time I focused on that. I wanted to personally execute - what is contemporary painting and where are its potential white spots in relationship with space, due to fact of absolute lack of experience in tradition of this particular media. I do not see big a difference between the way I previously approached methods of discovering other media or artistic content to myself. It always starts with restructuring the existing. It starts with the simplest elements, but trying to find an unexplored viewpoint on the problem. That has naturally become my characteristic recognition sign. That has helped critics, fortunately for a longer period, to keep confidence of discovery towards my activities as an artist. Hopefully.     

EG: How did working in advertising for nearly 10 years affect your work? Do you believe you became more or less critical of consumerisms cultural influence?

KG: Yes I do. Naturally, washing dirty pottery develops thinking- that’s a valuable motto I received in my teenage years and past down to my children, promoting to discover the bright side in every surfaced misery you cannot escape in life. It is good that I had this particular experience. I selectively use it. That gives quite strong theoretical knowledge how marketing art works. Clearly, I am not interested in safe speedway, having now an opportunity to a second breeze as an artist. That sounds logic to an ex-advertisement guy. You get stronger to turn your activity against the mainstream. You do not care about fear for perception as a loser. In practice, discover the beauty of confidence towards a strong base in simple actions. It works for me.

Spin as one wishes, you have to acknowledge that we, East Europeans still always appear as visiting primates to the western cultural establishment. Realizing that never felt better and free. One gets more horizons, an increased importance of local, national background.

EG: It has been said in reference to your work, that “adults are often over-rational, wanting to receive everything readymade.” Can you elaborate on this, specifically in relation to your continued use of Mickey Mouse. Is this more a critique of corporate cultural consumerism or a reference to childhood?

KG: Not mine, but assisting to my children. I still wonder why I have such works? I think it was like a tool to speed up understanding what’s happening around me, in post soviet space. And it is somehow natural that in the last few years I have lost the intension to continue such type of expressions. Space has changed again.

Personal conclusion could be- it is a strange mixture of objective practical poverty, receiving quick, easy delivering symbolic dream messages and a naked sense of reality when you wake up. Perfect elements for borderless interpretations. I know exactly how I created them - cheep & easy for personal use. I do not wonder why readymade art installations establish their importance nowadays again. Same reasons.   

EG: Do you ever have nightmares about Mickey Mouse?

Never! It is just my favourite stick to revise my creative garbage. Nothing personal anymore, but I love it! 

1 year ago  2 notes

Title: Republic of Armenia, Manuals, Subjects of New Universality

Artists: Mher Azatyan, Grigor Khachatryan, Astghik Melkonyan

Curators: Ruben Arevshatyan, Vardan Azatyan, Nazareth Karoyan

Venue: Collegio Armeno Moorat Raphael, Ca’Zenobio, Dorsoduro 2596

Manuals: Subjects of New Universality declares itself concerned with the Republic of Armenia’s warring desires: a demand for modernisation and globalisation, but also the necessity of retaining an ‘identity’. Not an unfamiliar subject at this year’s biennale, which itself is a reflection of the globalised art world - yet Armenia’s approach is a little different. While each of the artists deal with concerns related to those outlined above, the exhibition also posits itself as a ‘manual’, for the successful conciliation of such issues. Indeed, the exhibition handout is laid out like a blueprint, with symbols and markings guiding the viewer as to its use.

There are three artists represented here, the first being Grigor Khachatryan. His Official Meetings series describes the conjunction of real and staged via political encounters with the public – a smiling official shakes hands with the ordinary man – a familiar enough image in contemporary society. Yet by producing multiple encounters, enlarged and hung ceremoniously on the wall, Khachatryan draws attention to these constructed political personas, providing a useful warning that relates well to the exhibition’s theme.

Mher Azatyan’s work on the other hand deals with a separation from context, where photographs and the captions related to them are divided between rooms. Photographs cover the walls of a small room, at times intriguing but seemingly incoherent and unrelated. Yet beyond, questions and thoughts are pasted onto the walls, reflecting back on the decontextualised photographs through the suggestive power of text.

Finally, Astghik Melkonyan’s How-to Manual A Monthly Salary transforms its setting into a visual representation of the practical economies of regular Armenians. These statements, both harsh truths or comedic commentary, are presented in an eye-catching and almost corporate manner, forming an at-times jarring image of financial systems. Of all the exhibits, this appears closest to the Manuals theme – but at the same time this work is not a simplistic How-To, instead being a more transparent, layered vision of economy and above all debt.

In the end, this exhibition makes it clear that there is no singular way to provide a ‘manual’ for successful globalisation and modernity – though the artists here have been kind enough to elaborate upon some of the more important pitfalls.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago 

Title: Central Asia: Lingua Franca

Artists: Natalia Andrianova, Adis Seitaliev, Marat Raiymkulov, Said Atabekov, Galim Madanov, Zauresh Terekbay, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Alla Rumyantseva, Aleksey Rumyantsev, Artyom Ernst, Alexander Nikolaev

Curators: Oksana Shatalova, Boris Chukhovich, Georgy Mamedov

Joe Townend interviews Georgy Mamedov, curator of Lingua Franca / Франк тили 

Joe Townend: Given the range of age and experience of artists within the pavilion, it seems appropriate to ask how you think art in Central Asia has changed over the past twenty years. How are economic constraints affecting this?

Georgy Mamedov: Mid-aged artists, who started their practice in 1990-s early 2000 were still somehow integrated into the Soviet-built art infrastructure – they received formal professional training in art academies or schools, were members of artists’ unions, etc. Younger and emerging artists normally don’t have any professional training in art, or if they do, it normally doesn’t have anything to do with their practice, which is due to this  is quite multidisciplinary – they do not stick to one medium, and tend to converge visual practices and theatrical and literary experiences. Absence of art system as such in the region – with galleries, non-profit institutions, grants and scholarships, etc., makes it almost impossible to earn living from art practice, especially for the emerging artists. For instance, Marat Raiymkulov, who is part of the CAP this year, is a professional physicist and works in the research institute.

JT: Could you comment on your experiences of working alongside artists with whom you share a regional identity but whose national narratives are different? Is the communicative potential of the work compromised by its sharing a space with artists of a similar-yet-different cultural heritage?

GM: Reflection over this constantly growing gap between the countries that built Central Asia, and legitimacy of Central Asia – as entity as such was one of the driving force behind the CAP of this year, especially at the beginning of our work, when we were developing the concept. Indeed, in one pavilion we have to present artists from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, whose economic situation is hardly comparable, or Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with the enormous gap between these two in terms of political freedom and democracy development. So, the metaphor art as lingua franca, somehow emerged, among the others, from this internal debate about Central Asia and different national narratives it deals with. However, in the course of work with artists coming from four different countries their nationality was never an issue. We actually tried to avoid mentioning who comes from where in our external communication. Some institutional constraints – regional approach of many externally supported projects, activity of Regional Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts (Almaty) in 1990-s – early 2000, representative tendency on the international scene, when artists participate in the exhibition projects as Central Asian artists, rather than Kazakhstani or Uzbekistani, and some other reason, such as personal connections, Russian language – as lingua franca of this community, laid the foundations for a very special community of maybe a couple of hundred people. This community of artists, curators and art-mangers, exists beyond national borders and limits they normally apply. This pathos of community, that we also tried to convey in our exhibit, is in line with one of Bice Curiger’s questions addressed to the Biennale artists – Is art a nation?, which in case of Central Asia, should be answered positively.

JT: Much of the work in the Central Asian Pavilion addresses local narratives and folklore in light of international cultural imports. Does the Central Asian Pavilion complicate ideas of an occidental/oriental division?

GM: I guess it does complicate, but not in the conventional approach of opposition or even dichotomy. Projects of Said Atabekov, which we attributed as mixed language, is a good example of an attempt to question this all too typical division of Orient and Occident. His very expressive and often metaphorical projects always propose a more sophisticated way to perceive things and phenomena around us rather than just attribute them as oriental or occidental. His approach is miscegenation or creolization, which denies both orient and occident, and offers new identities, as simple as a lady simultaneously praying in Christian and Islamic manners (video Bosporus Prayer) , or more complicated and confusing ones as in the slide show Farewell of Slavianka – contaminating several cultural traditions, historical backgrounds and mediums. Practice of Said Atabekov and his first name, propose parallel with Edward Said, whose lifetime pathos most evidently expressed in his main work Orientalism was as well to deconstruct both Orient and Occident.  

JT: Adis Seitaliev’s Our Friend VaNgog considers the role of the person who speaks no ‘common language’. Could you comment on the notion of the artist as “holy fool”, necessarily operating outside established but sometimes unobvious power structures and refusing to speak the common language?

GM: Adis Seitaliev’s video, I think, gives a critical consideration of the situation when the artist is perceived as a “holly fool”, but that is not his choice or articulated positioning, the whole situation of one language environment, which his protagonist doesn’t fit in, because he doesn’t speak English, makes us think of him as ‘an artist who speaks through his works’, but this is not true, he just doesn’t speak English…

JT: One refrain of this year’s biennale is a critical stance to the idea of representing a country at a pavilion – the Nordic pavilion, for instance. Has self-reflexivity become something like a lingua franca in the Biennale?

GM: Questioning principles of national representation, attempts to reconsider them, by inviting as exhibitors non-natives or reconsidering the exhibition practice as such, focusing on lectures and social oriented projects (Norway pavilion) is definitely something remarkable of this year’s Biennale. I don’t know if it’s a lingua franca or  just a new trend of representation practice. We’ll see. I think that if we witness more collaboration between pavilions - joined projects or shared events, especially among those who resign outside the main venues – Giardini and Arsenale, we can talk about a kind of lingua franca…

JT: Most viewers will be largely unfamiliar with post-Soviet Central Asia. What are the challenges of showing work about Central Asia to an audience unaware of this context?

GM: In general our knowledge about the world (different parts of it) is limited, fragmented and stereotyped. We tried to reflect on this in our project ABC Representation – eye-testing chart with 25 symbols – most common representations of Central Asia, as proposed by 80 respondents from and outside the region. This kind of chart can be designed for any region of the world – there are always certain number of stereotypes and clichés about any region or country. So, in this sense the challenges of presenting Central Asia are not much different from those, the curators from Latin America or Africa or Middle East would have. We tried to support the exhibit with clear inscriptions and thoughtful and also clear catalogue texts, which we hope will really help people to better understand the context of presented art works.

1 year ago  1 note

Republic of San Marino

Venue: Palazzo Riva del Vin, San Polo 1097

Artists: Daniela Comani and various

The highlight of the San Marino pavilion comes even before you enter the door. Daniela Comani’s piece It was me. Diary 1900-1999  is printed on the wall outside the gallery’s garden. The wall of text is a collection of diary-like entries, a description of an event twinned with a date. Quickly, a pattern emerges it is clear that each entry is from someone who survived an event where the majority didn’t. It’s an edifice of luck, survivor’s guilt and plays to people’s love of survivor’s stories from macabre or catastrophic situations. Walking past this, in the small lawn before the gallery, there are sculptures on either side of the entrance path. Structurally they resemble bales of hay, but the material constituting them is metallic and golden. They are nice, you wouldn’t mind them in your garden, but there is not much more.

As we enter the gallery itself this devolution  from Comani’s piece continues. In the lightbox displays about pyramids of light and peace, it is hard to decipher whether the project it is cooly ironic or naively utopian. Either way, it’s visual form is of limited appeal, somewhat disregarding concerns for intent. The rest of the show is of a similar level, aesthetically there is an amount of appeal present. Unfortunately this is undermined by the lack of coherence in curation – heterogeneous works are packed closely together in what seems to be an exercise in optimism rather than premeditated design. 

1 year ago  2 notes

Country: Italian Pavilion

Artist: Multiple Artists 

Curator: Vittorio Sgarbi

Venue: Arsenale, Padiglione Italia, Tese and Giardino delle Vergini

Considering the sheer mass of artists in the Italian pavilion, it would be nothing short of inappropriate to try to ‘summarise’ the genres on display (and rather time-consuming). Work in multiple media is stacked, layered and crammed into the Italian pavilion on curved shelving to ensure the maximum space is utilised. Thus, like any exhibition featuring such a diverse range of artists, cohesion is the primary downfall of this presentation. And while this year coincidentally is the 150th anniversary of Italy’s unification as a country (with many artists choosing to reference in their artworks), no overarching theme comes through explicitly to the overwhelmed viewer.

While summation is impossible, a notable strand of derivation from the world of ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance pervades, in some cases leading to a repetition of models – two works both relying openly on Mantegna’s Dead Christ lead to shockingly similar artistic conclusions. These tend to be hit-or-miss, and rather than wade through the incoherent jumble, I would recommend spending time in the only cohesively effective section, the ‘museo della mafia’ section which occupies the suspended wooden platform.

This dark, oppressive environment chronicles the history of the mafia, and includes artistic interpretations of the subject. While a disturbing series of exhibits, this is a necessary counterweight to some of the optimistically naïve celebrations of Italy’s 150 years – and manages to leave a far deeper impression than the multiple green, white and red-coloured works that derive their sole meaning from those invested in the Italian flag.

Title: The Heard and the Unheard - Soundscape Taiwan

Artists: Wang Hong-Kai, Su Yu-Hsien

Curator: Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan

Venue: Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209 (San Marco)

The Heard and the Unheard: Soundscape Taiwan in the Palazzo delle Prigioni offers an intriguing alternative to the visual art-centric exhibits composing much of the Biennale. Instead, what one encounters on entering is a room filled with comfortable seats and headphones. Rather than the visual, auditory stimuli provide the experience here, as the exhibit focuses on both the music and other ‘noises’ that form the soundscape of Taiwan.

Playing through the headphones in the ‘Sound Library/Bar’ are songs, either politically or socially-orientated, which form a historical context for the rest of the exhibition. Recycled furniture is placed invitingly around the space, offering the listener a place to sit and take in the atmosphere. While much of this music will pose a problem to foreign speakers, this language barrier does in some ways allow the music to become an abstract representation of the issues considered by the songwriters.

However the exhibit also features two other major works. Hong-Kai Wang’s Music While We Work is a video similarly exploring the social spheres of Taiwanese society through sound, but via a less direct, lyric-driven approach. For this project, Wang invited retired sugar-factory workers in her home town to re-visit their former workplace, and personally record the sounds of their old environment. In post-production these sounds were then edited, allowing the resulting work to combine both the original soundscape and its artistic interpretation. Sounds of Nothing by Yu-Hsien Su, on the other hand, relates more to the initial Sound Library, with the musical traditions of ordinary people explored through subtitled videos.

As an experience, the relegation of the visual here does make for an interesting experience within the Biennale context. Being primarily focused on sound and music, this exhibition gently reminds the viewer that there is more to life than ‘looking’.

Jennifer Owen

Title: Starie Novosti (Old News)

Artist: Organization: Anastasia Khoroshilova

Curator: Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Venue: Biblioteca del Temanza, Dorsoduro 1602, Collateral Event

Taking as its subject matter the 2004 terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia, Starie Novosti is not an easy exhibition to encounter. Despite featuring nine large-scale portraits of mothers taken hostage during the crisis, the exhibition has a definite installation feel, as huge containers are propped open to allow a view of the women inside. Yet opposite these detailed prints, news footage of the conflict plays on small television screens, also contained within the box. These oppressive ‘cabinets’ give a sinister edge to the works, as one has the impression that when the doors closed these mothers – many of whom lost their children during the event – will be forced to stare at this footage forever.

And yet while one can sense immediately that the resonance of that terrorism will last with those women forever, at the same time this exhibition deals with the generally fickle public imagination after such a crisis. For the rest of the population, i.e. those not directly affected by the events, the 2004 deaths are now history, no longer a day-to-day burden. The cargo-like nature of these boxes thus draws attention to this unfortunate (but perhaps inescapable) consequence of time passing, as one again has the sensation that these distressing events have been ‘packed up’ in society’s memory, to be filed away and forgotten along with those involved. Khoroshilova’s installation, then, is like peering into a forgotten collection of past tragedy – but still manages, through the conjunction of video and photograph – to make these events fresh and affecting once more.

Jennifer Owen

Title: Mexico, Cuadrado rojo, rosa imposible (Red Square Impossible Pink)

Artist: Melanie Smith, Rafael Ortega

Curator: José Luis Barrios Lara

Venue: Palazzo Rota-Ivancich, Castello 4421

 

An ambitiously-worded press release may have greeted you on discovering Red Square Impossible Pink at the Mexican Pavilion. For example, this exhibition declares one of its intentions to tackle ‘the issue of the transformation of utopias as artistic projections into heterotopias as productions of social and political experience in Latin America’. However, this mixed-media exposition in the Palazzo Rota Ivancich does prove rather more accessible than its rather impenetrable description may suggest.

The series of Bulto videos, for example, focus on absurdly large, fuchsia-pink packages transplanted into some commonplace scenarios. And as one watches the figures struggle to move these objects, strapped to vehicles or dragged through post-office queues, one is simultaneously aware both of the juxtaposition of the nonsensical and the quotidian – but also the burdens one places on others, and how they attempt to navigate around these obstacles. As metaphors for the structures of modern interactions, these packages illuminate the everyday procedures of society by displaying the converse – farcical scenarios created within the artistic sphere causing trouble for their participants. In an extension of the project, the ‘Package’ mass was also transported to Venice for five days, extending the scope of this problematic blockade to a city where navigation is already hindered by multiple waterways, here specifically illuminating the complications of modernity in an outdated etting.

Furthermore, Smith’s wholly immersive environment manages to envelop the viewer in a space where art and reality overlap, allowing both the fulfilment of the conceptual framework articulated in the press release, as well as a successful, engaging experience for the viewer. Whether it is the collaborative (but cacophonous) creation of seminal images in the video Estadio Azteca, Proeza Maleable, or the physical paintings merging with the interior decoration of the Palazzo, Smith’s work manages to be artistically and socially relevant – regardless of whether one understands every pronouncement of its accompanying statement or not.

Jennifer Owen

Interview with Melanie Smith

Questions by Denise Kwan and Jennifer Owen

How has your relocation to Mexico influenced your practice, and in what way has it influenced your perception of culture?

My moving to Mexico implied a 180 degree shift in my approach to making and thinking about art.  As an art student formalism and minimalism were important influences, whereas in Mexico I was immediately taken with the baroque elaboration of the city itself and structures of power, and the way in which abstraction fitted in in Mexico was very different to my mind. There is a sort of corruption and bending of minimalist forms here that cannot be avoided. It is not a culture of reductionism, totally the opposite, and so these were two counterpositions that I have always worked with : the impossibility of the insertion of the history of art from a European perspective into the living experience in Latin America. Being from England, one of the biggest colonial countries of the world, has also marked my experience in Mexico. I’m interested in the post-colonial debate, but as an idea that fragments culture, and something that can speak of histories in a more complex way than just periphery versus centre.

How does the role of collaboration function in your practice?

Rafael and I collaborate on the the film productions, and I have a separate practice in the studio, but the two are interconnected and most of the images of the paintings come from filmic ideas or sometimes even as precursors to film projects. Rafael comes from film and his framing and timing are some of the most vital elements of the films, without losing the pictorial sense which is where I come from. But Rafa also works with other artistas and I think this sets us aside from a normal pair of artists. I think our independence is important to the input of the projects; the fact that there is always some external input is key. I’m even interested in the idea of collaborating with curators or writers and right now I’m working on a project with a friend who works in restauration. We are interested in that breaking down of barriers which may not necessarily happen as a full-time dual team.

Ideas of anonymity and identification within places appear in your work, could you explain your ideas? 

There is always a reference to the body in my work, but as you say in a very anonymous way. This is clear in the video work of Spiral city for example, - the city becomes the anonymous, post human body – the same applies to Tianguis II – there is always an off-frame, almost spectral, quality. Aztec Stadium also clearly brings together the collective ordered body that dissolves into chaos – or the mass as  a revolutionary force that has the potential to tear apart the frame. I think the anonymity has more to do with the action happening off the frame or somewhere else – an almost fugitive quality which eludes  explanation. But I think it’s something I’m looking for in the work. This fugitiveness leads to the idea of heterotopic place assuming its own quality.  Xilitla for example is a very off-the-map place that assumes its own irrationality, and non-functionality. I think this identification of places that you mention is about the impossibility of representation – the places I choose are perhaps  part of a larger concern about abstraction.

Some may argue that abstracted art and politics are distinctly separate; how do you view their roles with one another?

For me they can respond to each other, and more importantly agency runs between them. Perhaps it’s easier to see it inversely: I do not see the function of art to be some sort of moral consciousness of politics and neither do I think of abstraction being purely about abstraction. In the best of cases the intersection of the two should open up a third space, but not a space that necesarily gives answers. A common thread in my work for example is the boundary between the physical frame (as in painting) and its extension into the political frame and a re-reading of formal structures or abstraction in social/public space. This is evident in the last scene of the Aztec Stadium where Malevich’s Red Square, already divided in a thousand small rectangles by the students stunt cards, is dispersed all over the football pitch into a sort of irresolute provocation, doubting the purity of the square.

Do you feel the relocation of the ‘Package’ to Venice radically altered or extended the concept beyond its initial staging in Mexico? How, if at all, did you feel this changed the meaning of this project?

Jose Luis and I talked a lot about how this project could insert into the context of Venice. Infact the Bulto (package) was first presented, and shot, in Lima, as a 43 minute film, but this, we decided would have been too long for Venice, particularly as there were already two other film works. So we decided to fracture and edit certain scenes, placed on monitors throughout the palazzo that the spectator would walk through with. Also there was a simultaneous action on the opening days of the Biennale – whereby we took the Bulto through the small streets of Venice, around the Palazzo. It was used as a kind of blockage device amongst all the tourists and locals and day to day movements within the city. People did get angry when they found that they couldn’t pass in certain streets, and in a way it was about that. On certain occasions I went out with the two people who were carrying the Bulto, and I could see people looking and asking themselves what was that thing, and what was inside. I think the Bulto has its own agency and this was one of the points we wanted to explore in Venice. In Lima people automatically associated the Bulto as a bomb, going back to the threat of terrorism. In Venice I think it we used it more as a subliminal signage for the Pavilion and also to make reference to the way in which the Bulto was just going round and round on itself in the laberinths of Venice – a kind of parallel narrative between the Italian and Latin American experience of circulation and chaos.

How important is the context of the Palazzo Rota Ivancich to these works? Were they specifically created for the space or merely situated there after their creation?

I think the Palazzo becomes like a big installation for the exhibition. No, the works weren’t made for the space but – particularly in the case of Xilitla and the paintings there was a fortunate mimesis between the space and the conceptual origins within the work. The paintings looked like they had been made for the space (they are actually part of a series that links to the video projects) as there was a constant dialogue between the wallpaper and the way the paintings sunk in to their backgound. Sound was an important factor. We had to isolate the electric guitar of the Aztec Stadium from the rest of the space, hence the double door entrance and exit to the piece, but this helped the sensation of delirium and isolation from the rest of the installation upstairs which really worked as a mimetic representation within the decadence of Venice. We really worked on the walk-through of the exhibition, together with Rafael – the sensorial experience of the  whole space was really important, hence the different colours and temperatures, together with the sound led the viewer into the melancholic space of Xilitla at the end of the show.

Was the curation of the space a collaborative effort for the Biennale?

Jose Luis and I have worked together over the last couple of years on the production of the Aztec Stadium. This was an enormous piece that took over a year to produce and finally make happen. So over that time frame we talked a lot about common threads in my work and concepts that had been interesting him in his work. I had also been working on Xilitla with another curator Paola Santascoy, in a similar way for a long time. So they are projects and ideas that had been brewing for a while, but their insertion in the Palazzo was crucial in taking the projects out of a local condition. Finally I think they way in which they function is all set off by the projects’ juxtaposition with the Palazzo as a decadent European ruin. In a way I think it was a culmination of a series of ideas from both of us that came together at one moment. 

Your work at times shares concerns – primarily those related to modernity – with the work of Francis Alÿs; do you feel there is a dialogue between your artistic investigations and Alÿs’ work?

Yes, we have known each other for over twenty years and there is a strong connection of where the works come from and at the same time the critique, not to mention that we both work with Rafael. We have worked in the same city and there are connections I think in the way in which we go about the investigation of a project or subject, and the perhaps our pictorial interest, although my interest in painting stems back to the avant–garde as a trigger more than anything else. Fundamentally I think Francis’ work goes from him, as a subject, to the exterior, and mine goes from the exterior to the subject or interior, and I’m thinking about abstraction in quite a different way. Francis’ work has more concerns with the failure of modernism, whereas,  particularly in the Biennale presentation, my work is more concerned with fragmentation as a kind of constellation of modernism; slippage, grey areas and circulation are all important to me. It’s less about periphery and more about alterity. 

Title: Lithuania, Behind the White Curtain

Artist: Darius Mikšys

Venue: Scuola S. Pasquale, Castello 2786

The concept behind the Lithuanian pavilion is, arguably, more important than the works on display – but therein lies its brilliance. Consisting of works by multiple artists, the concept ensures that (unlike similar, artistically-diverse exhibitions) the presentation remains strikingly lucid and approachable.

Faced with the challenge of representing an entire country, Darius Miksys (responsible for the concept), invited artists who had received an artistic grant from the government to submit a work from the period the endowment covered. Yet rather than display these works simultaneously in Venice, Miksys’ concept – Behind the White Curtain – extends the scope of Lithuania’s presence at the Biennale to question traditional museum presentations by heightening viewer participation and choice.

On entering, one is subjected to a rather sparse, gallery-like environment, with the majority of works stored behind the eponymous curtain. In front of the curtain, a temporary display of works is placed according to the whims of visitors to the space. Catalogues line the edges of the room, and once asked, staff will collect the works for the viewer and place them according to their specific wishes. The spectator then is empowered, resulting in both a very exciting, but also very unusual experience.

Such a level of decision-making usually rests with invisible chief-curators, so naturally this setup does take some getting used to – but in the immediate contemporary context, with museums competing ever-more ferociously for the attention of visitors in a world full of choice, the concept here is right up-to-date. Here, the typical exhibiting processes are reconfigured along the model of a selection-based interface where the visitor has complete control, questioning the relation of the viewer to the collection or institution and giving control to the primary consumer themselves. 

 

Title: Latvia, Artificial Peace (Contemporary Landscape)

Artist: Kristaps Gelzis

Curator: Astrida Rogule

Venue: Palazzo Albrizzi, Cannaregio 4118

If one attempted to describe the characteristics of the Republic of Latvia’s Pavilion at the Biennale, it would be necessary to mention both “neon” and “fluorescent lighting”. Not phrases one might immediately associate with an exhibition entitled Artificial Peace, but all the same, Kristaps Ģelzis’ painted works remain astonishingly serene.

Introduced by a large-scale text work that hints little at the vibrant hues dominating the canvases beyond it, the principal room in the Palazzo Albrizzi is deliberately dark, allowing the lighting to transform the walls into a glowing panorama. The effect as a whole, with radiant vistas suggestive of dawn, midday and dusk, is rather surreal, as the neon does not detract but rather enhances the immediacy of the works. Although the colour scheme could easily have become garish, instead this signals a contemporary atmosphere within these landscapes, fulfilling the title’s promise to be ‘artificial.

While aspiring to little more than this transformation, and the creation of an electric vision of landscape both awakening and calming the viewer, Artificial Peace successfully transports the viewer, however temporarily, into a wholly immersive environment.

Elliott Goat interviews Kristaps Gelzis:

Elliott Goat: In an interview in 1993 you reiterated “the individual handicrafts must not be lost in contemporary expression, since they stay in mind for a long time.” Despite working in new digital media do you still feel the artist craft and hand are still paramount to his/her practice?

Kristaps Ģelzis: Even more. I feel tired of overwhelming amount of works created with methods of borderless brainstorming, to come out with arty “message” projects on A4, adding excel document with production costs. Latter in case of fortunate art promoter, passing it to craftsmen team. Frequently such an execution ruins my expectations. These art facts can be nicely read in seconds, quick access to the point with help of inner imagination, no particular need for real touch. As a professional of longer experience you feel a lack of particular need to see it. You can smartly pass the artwork idea further through “word of mouth” or spend 2 seconds on checking the documentation on the Internet. Yes, it works. I got it! Especially in Big scale. Thick books with annotations help with interpretations. Very contemporary.

This is sad. This is now too simple to me. Well-settled office work. Even in Big scale majority of cases I see only A4. I lose the artist’s personality; I see only calculations and play with impersonal context without the belief of true experience. Artists get anonymous, employees of industry. Also it sounds boring, but extremely contemporary.

Van Gogh was right- there is no need for ears to paint. Pain is needed! That is priceless action, pure individual. The way you buy more time for your art. Maximum personal presence, whatever media.

EG: From your days of Art and Film in the late 1980s what is your relationship to the urban setting? Following on from that, you have stated that the space where the exhibition is held is always most important. How does working in the rarefied atmosphere of the biennale affect the way your work is read?

KG: For me space is an undisputable part of my background. From the first day I have lived surrounded with people who organize air around me. My father was an architect, later also my older brother. Urban issues have always been a main menu in my visual and esthetical education. Despite to my protest against family tradition, choosing artists profession, I cannot escape from automatic habit restructuring the surrounding I have seen. Even if it is a simple painting, I always target the imaginary place or wall first, before creating the idea. That for sure raises some limitations in creative thinking. Later finding escape you expand it to structuring human material.

The same happened with the artwork in Venice. It was supposed to be for a large step, more dramatic. It was my strong feeling at home, but the outcome is infected with Venice city relaxing viruses. Honestly I’m happy that I used this opportunity. That strengthens the reason, why I was there. I could not prolong my political, economical etc. discomfort and emotionally export it. Because I did the whole painting on the exhibition spot.  For many reasons there was not second painting shot possible.

I had to do it right, using the available energy of surrounded context.  And as you can imagine, I seriously rebuilt the exhibition space, of course. Stage set matters to obtain the wished interpretation and emotional setup.

EG: In specific regards to your exhibition ARTifical Peace, how has your relationship with censorship changed given the varying contexts and changing settings your work has been viewed in over the past years?

KG: I lately have a feeling of serious revision in my creative “parking place”. Reason can be taking care of different auditory one can meet. It remains an important issue to me. In my position social activity, opinion statement is more fertile towards local, well known, targeted surrounding. Participating in the Biennale is professional and an art specific exercise to any present artists. Logically this time I focused on that. I wanted to personally execute - what is contemporary painting and where are its potential white spots in relationship with space, due to fact of absolute lack of experience in tradition of this particular media. I do not see big a difference between the way I previously approached methods of discovering other media or artistic content to myself. It always starts with restructuring the existing. It starts with the simplest elements, but trying to find an unexplored viewpoint on the problem. That has naturally become my characteristic recognition sign. That has helped critics, fortunately for a longer period, to keep confidence of discovery towards my activities as an artist. Hopefully.     

EG: How did working in advertising for nearly 10 years affect your work? Do you believe you became more or less critical of consumerisms cultural influence?

KG: Yes I do. Naturally, washing dirty pottery develops thinking- that’s a valuable motto I received in my teenage years and past down to my children, promoting to discover the bright side in every surfaced misery you cannot escape in life. It is good that I had this particular experience. I selectively use it. That gives quite strong theoretical knowledge how marketing art works. Clearly, I am not interested in safe speedway, having now an opportunity to a second breeze as an artist. That sounds logic to an ex-advertisement guy. You get stronger to turn your activity against the mainstream. You do not care about fear for perception as a loser. In practice, discover the beauty of confidence towards a strong base in simple actions. It works for me.

Spin as one wishes, you have to acknowledge that we, East Europeans still always appear as visiting primates to the western cultural establishment. Realizing that never felt better and free. One gets more horizons, an increased importance of local, national background.

EG: It has been said in reference to your work, that “adults are often over-rational, wanting to receive everything readymade.” Can you elaborate on this, specifically in relation to your continued use of Mickey Mouse. Is this more a critique of corporate cultural consumerism or a reference to childhood?

KG: Not mine, but assisting to my children. I still wonder why I have such works? I think it was like a tool to speed up understanding what’s happening around me, in post soviet space. And it is somehow natural that in the last few years I have lost the intension to continue such type of expressions. Space has changed again.

Personal conclusion could be- it is a strange mixture of objective practical poverty, receiving quick, easy delivering symbolic dream messages and a naked sense of reality when you wake up. Perfect elements for borderless interpretations. I know exactly how I created them - cheep & easy for personal use. I do not wonder why readymade art installations establish their importance nowadays again. Same reasons.   

EG: Do you ever have nightmares about Mickey Mouse?

Never! It is just my favourite stick to revise my creative garbage. Nothing personal anymore, but I love it! 

Title: Republic of Armenia, Manuals, Subjects of New Universality

Artists: Mher Azatyan, Grigor Khachatryan, Astghik Melkonyan

Curators: Ruben Arevshatyan, Vardan Azatyan, Nazareth Karoyan

Venue: Collegio Armeno Moorat Raphael, Ca’Zenobio, Dorsoduro 2596

Manuals: Subjects of New Universality declares itself concerned with the Republic of Armenia’s warring desires: a demand for modernisation and globalisation, but also the necessity of retaining an ‘identity’. Not an unfamiliar subject at this year’s biennale, which itself is a reflection of the globalised art world - yet Armenia’s approach is a little different. While each of the artists deal with concerns related to those outlined above, the exhibition also posits itself as a ‘manual’, for the successful conciliation of such issues. Indeed, the exhibition handout is laid out like a blueprint, with symbols and markings guiding the viewer as to its use.

There are three artists represented here, the first being Grigor Khachatryan. His Official Meetings series describes the conjunction of real and staged via political encounters with the public – a smiling official shakes hands with the ordinary man – a familiar enough image in contemporary society. Yet by producing multiple encounters, enlarged and hung ceremoniously on the wall, Khachatryan draws attention to these constructed political personas, providing a useful warning that relates well to the exhibition’s theme.

Mher Azatyan’s work on the other hand deals with a separation from context, where photographs and the captions related to them are divided between rooms. Photographs cover the walls of a small room, at times intriguing but seemingly incoherent and unrelated. Yet beyond, questions and thoughts are pasted onto the walls, reflecting back on the decontextualised photographs through the suggestive power of text.

Finally, Astghik Melkonyan’s How-to Manual A Monthly Salary transforms its setting into a visual representation of the practical economies of regular Armenians. These statements, both harsh truths or comedic commentary, are presented in an eye-catching and almost corporate manner, forming an at-times jarring image of financial systems. Of all the exhibits, this appears closest to the Manuals theme – but at the same time this work is not a simplistic How-To, instead being a more transparent, layered vision of economy and above all debt.

In the end, this exhibition makes it clear that there is no singular way to provide a ‘manual’ for successful globalisation and modernity – though the artists here have been kind enough to elaborate upon some of the more important pitfalls.

Jennifer Owen

Title: Central Asia: Lingua Franca

Artists: Natalia Andrianova, Adis Seitaliev, Marat Raiymkulov, Said Atabekov, Galim Madanov, Zauresh Terekbay, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Alla Rumyantseva, Aleksey Rumyantsev, Artyom Ernst, Alexander Nikolaev

Curators: Oksana Shatalova, Boris Chukhovich, Georgy Mamedov

Joe Townend interviews Georgy Mamedov, curator of Lingua Franca / Франк тили 

Joe Townend: Given the range of age and experience of artists within the pavilion, it seems appropriate to ask how you think art in Central Asia has changed over the past twenty years. How are economic constraints affecting this?

Georgy Mamedov: Mid-aged artists, who started their practice in 1990-s early 2000 were still somehow integrated into the Soviet-built art infrastructure – they received formal professional training in art academies or schools, were members of artists’ unions, etc. Younger and emerging artists normally don’t have any professional training in art, or if they do, it normally doesn’t have anything to do with their practice, which is due to this  is quite multidisciplinary – they do not stick to one medium, and tend to converge visual practices and theatrical and literary experiences. Absence of art system as such in the region – with galleries, non-profit institutions, grants and scholarships, etc., makes it almost impossible to earn living from art practice, especially for the emerging artists. For instance, Marat Raiymkulov, who is part of the CAP this year, is a professional physicist and works in the research institute.

JT: Could you comment on your experiences of working alongside artists with whom you share a regional identity but whose national narratives are different? Is the communicative potential of the work compromised by its sharing a space with artists of a similar-yet-different cultural heritage?

GM: Reflection over this constantly growing gap between the countries that built Central Asia, and legitimacy of Central Asia – as entity as such was one of the driving force behind the CAP of this year, especially at the beginning of our work, when we were developing the concept. Indeed, in one pavilion we have to present artists from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, whose economic situation is hardly comparable, or Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with the enormous gap between these two in terms of political freedom and democracy development. So, the metaphor art as lingua franca, somehow emerged, among the others, from this internal debate about Central Asia and different national narratives it deals with. However, in the course of work with artists coming from four different countries their nationality was never an issue. We actually tried to avoid mentioning who comes from where in our external communication. Some institutional constraints – regional approach of many externally supported projects, activity of Regional Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts (Almaty) in 1990-s – early 2000, representative tendency on the international scene, when artists participate in the exhibition projects as Central Asian artists, rather than Kazakhstani or Uzbekistani, and some other reason, such as personal connections, Russian language – as lingua franca of this community, laid the foundations for a very special community of maybe a couple of hundred people. This community of artists, curators and art-mangers, exists beyond national borders and limits they normally apply. This pathos of community, that we also tried to convey in our exhibit, is in line with one of Bice Curiger’s questions addressed to the Biennale artists – Is art a nation?, which in case of Central Asia, should be answered positively.

JT: Much of the work in the Central Asian Pavilion addresses local narratives and folklore in light of international cultural imports. Does the Central Asian Pavilion complicate ideas of an occidental/oriental division?

GM: I guess it does complicate, but not in the conventional approach of opposition or even dichotomy. Projects of Said Atabekov, which we attributed as mixed language, is a good example of an attempt to question this all too typical division of Orient and Occident. His very expressive and often metaphorical projects always propose a more sophisticated way to perceive things and phenomena around us rather than just attribute them as oriental or occidental. His approach is miscegenation or creolization, which denies both orient and occident, and offers new identities, as simple as a lady simultaneously praying in Christian and Islamic manners (video Bosporus Prayer) , or more complicated and confusing ones as in the slide show Farewell of Slavianka – contaminating several cultural traditions, historical backgrounds and mediums. Practice of Said Atabekov and his first name, propose parallel with Edward Said, whose lifetime pathos most evidently expressed in his main work Orientalism was as well to deconstruct both Orient and Occident.  

JT: Adis Seitaliev’s Our Friend VaNgog considers the role of the person who speaks no ‘common language’. Could you comment on the notion of the artist as “holy fool”, necessarily operating outside established but sometimes unobvious power structures and refusing to speak the common language?

GM: Adis Seitaliev’s video, I think, gives a critical consideration of the situation when the artist is perceived as a “holly fool”, but that is not his choice or articulated positioning, the whole situation of one language environment, which his protagonist doesn’t fit in, because he doesn’t speak English, makes us think of him as ‘an artist who speaks through his works’, but this is not true, he just doesn’t speak English…

JT: One refrain of this year’s biennale is a critical stance to the idea of representing a country at a pavilion – the Nordic pavilion, for instance. Has self-reflexivity become something like a lingua franca in the Biennale?

GM: Questioning principles of national representation, attempts to reconsider them, by inviting as exhibitors non-natives or reconsidering the exhibition practice as such, focusing on lectures and social oriented projects (Norway pavilion) is definitely something remarkable of this year’s Biennale. I don’t know if it’s a lingua franca or  just a new trend of representation practice. We’ll see. I think that if we witness more collaboration between pavilions - joined projects or shared events, especially among those who resign outside the main venues – Giardini and Arsenale, we can talk about a kind of lingua franca…

JT: Most viewers will be largely unfamiliar with post-Soviet Central Asia. What are the challenges of showing work about Central Asia to an audience unaware of this context?

GM: In general our knowledge about the world (different parts of it) is limited, fragmented and stereotyped. We tried to reflect on this in our project ABC Representation – eye-testing chart with 25 symbols – most common representations of Central Asia, as proposed by 80 respondents from and outside the region. This kind of chart can be designed for any region of the world – there are always certain number of stereotypes and clichés about any region or country. So, in this sense the challenges of presenting Central Asia are not much different from those, the curators from Latin America or Africa or Middle East would have. We tried to support the exhibit with clear inscriptions and thoughtful and also clear catalogue texts, which we hope will really help people to better understand the context of presented art works.

Republic of San Marino

Venue: Palazzo Riva del Vin, San Polo 1097

Artists: Daniela Comani and various

The highlight of the San Marino pavilion comes even before you enter the door. Daniela Comani’s piece It was me. Diary 1900-1999  is printed on the wall outside the gallery’s garden. The wall of text is a collection of diary-like entries, a description of an event twinned with a date. Quickly, a pattern emerges it is clear that each entry is from someone who survived an event where the majority didn’t. It’s an edifice of luck, survivor’s guilt and plays to people’s love of survivor’s stories from macabre or catastrophic situations. Walking past this, in the small lawn before the gallery, there are sculptures on either side of the entrance path. Structurally they resemble bales of hay, but the material constituting them is metallic and golden. They are nice, you wouldn’t mind them in your garden, but there is not much more.

As we enter the gallery itself this devolution  from Comani’s piece continues. In the lightbox displays about pyramids of light and peace, it is hard to decipher whether the project it is cooly ironic or naively utopian. Either way, it’s visual form is of limited appeal, somewhat disregarding concerns for intent. The rest of the show is of a similar level, aesthetically there is an amount of appeal present. Unfortunately this is undermined by the lack of coherence in curation – heterogeneous works are packed closely together in what seems to be an exercise in optimism rather than premeditated design. 

About:

A Virtual Biennale is a project produced by the LINE Magazine collective.

It seeks to document the Biennale through a coherent online format, where hierarchies are significantly flattened and the work exists purely in images. By transferring the physical to the virtual, the online Biennale emphasises the Fair's existence as a spectacle, which much like Venice, exists primarily in our imaginations and through the frame of the lens.

2011's Venice Biennale is titled 'Illuminations' and is curated by Bice Curriger. It seeks to 'unveil hidden truths.' Taking this idea as our lead, we hope to elucidate the truths that remain implicit within the Biennale and shed light on them through this webpage and a forthcoming edition of Line Magazine titled 'The Illuminated Artist'.

Over the next few weeks a series of interviews, reviews and critical essays will be added alongside these images. The texts will question the function and purpose of the Biennale in the age of globalisation, the social and political nature of some art showcased and the responsibility of its makers, curators and audience. It will also expose and question the corruption of funding, prizes and sponsorships at the Fair.

Members of the LINE collective:
Rachael Cloughton, Emily Burke, Kathryn Lloyd, Joao Abbott-Gribben, Jemma Craig, Jennifer Owen, Laura Stocks, Matthew Macaulay

Line Magazine was founded in 2010 by Rachael Cloughton and Thomas Carlile: linemagazine.tumblr.com / www.linemagazine.co.uk

© Rachael Cloughton 2011

Following: