A Virtual Biennale

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 150^th 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: Entre Siempre y Jamás (Between Forever and Never)

Artist: Multiple Artists

Curator: Alfons Hug

Co-Curators: Paz Guevara, Patricia Rivadeneira, Alberto Saraiva

Venue: Arsenale, Isolotto, Pavilion of the Istituto Italo-Latinoamericano

1 year ago 2 notes

Working for Change: Project for the Moroccan Pavilion

Curator: Abdellah Karroum

Artist: Multiple participants

Venue: Spazio Punch, Ex Birrerie, Giudecca Island

Think back to the last politically or socially-orientated art exhibition you last saw. Perhaps you stopped by once, soaked in the atmosphere and left. Perhaps you visited on multiple occasions and discovered every last metaphor and subtext. But then the exhibition ends. The work is packed up, possibly sold, and the expressive or motivating impulses are paralysed; limited by the boundaries of conventional exhibition schedules.

That is not Working for Change. Instead this project, present at the Venice Biennale via Morocco, has sufficient momentum to ensure that its subject – artistic production within changing societies – will continue to be tackled long after leaving its temporary home. As Abdellah Karroum (curator) explains, there is no beginning, middle or end to this project: it is not a spectacle to be produced, exhibited and then discarded. Working on the foundations of his ongoing project l’appartement22, Karroum designed this project to both benefit the artists selected, all of whom engage with the position of art in society, and to propose a new method for working with artists within the Biennale context. And while the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ may have formed the immediate context for Working for Change, it is clear from the outset that politics is not the only concern of these artists.

Rather than curate a traditional exhibition, Karroum instead invited artists to ‘occupy’ the space, working on table to discuss and potentially produce new work. This combination of research and production is a key aspect of the project, and is the first signifier that it has more potential than any finite exhibition. Resembling more a coordination office than a gallery or exhibition space, the Spazio Punch is filled with desks, not white walls and empty floor space. Some artists have already departed, leaving only traces behind, while others remain and some have yet to come: this tactic alone ensures the forward motion of the project.

An early occupant was Younès Rahmoun, a Moroccan artist, whose work Khamsa (Five) follows the artist’s attempt to form geometrical shapes from five wooden sticks, a reference to the five-branch star of Morocco. As such, the work acts as metaphor for the current political turmoil, by finding new configurations from old elements. However, through Rahmoun’s incorporation of the camera – the artist views his work from the lens and therefore creates hesitations – it also references the media’s involvement in societal changes. Furthermore, the video performance is accessible on the project website, allowing for a continual exposition and influence capable of extending the work infinitely beyond its initial performance in Venice.

A more practical approach has been taken by Tomas Colaço, a Portuguese artist, who has been present from the outset. Using a painting he brought to cover an old mattress and provide the artists and curators with a sofa, Colaço has adapted his existing work to the project. This is also reflected in his integration with the neighbours around the Spazio Punch, who are teaching him organic gardening and involving him in their community. This connection has already reaped benefits, assisting another artist with her project: setting up a living ‘still life’ for the opening night which was then consumed and destroyed, again linking art, community and life. In both these cases, art itself has been used to further the project in some form, be it the sustenance or comfort of those involved, again ensuring a forward momentum.

On the other hand, Doa Aly’s contribution is more theoretical. An Egyptian artist, the political uprisings in her country led her to consider how artists could function and contribute to a new system. Unsure of the questions that needed to be addressed, she compiled a list of questions written by others, contributing a selection instead of a visual piece. Once more, momentum is suggested through this bibliographic gesture, as while answers are not initially provided, the compilation of a list stimulates the search for the solutions, and ensures its continual relevance.

Another artist ‘present’ is Karim Rafi, a sound artist and poet. Unable to come physically to the Biennale, Rafi maintains a constant digital link to the project, emailing an image and/or text every day which is placed on the desk he chose for Venice. By setting up his own proxy desk in Casablanca and sending communications each day, Rafi has enacts a performance that relies on participation in a digital sense, therefore mimicking the media’s effects within society. Through this method, Rafi overcomes spatial distance to maintain a proximity to the project, while also highlighting a key aspect of life in the digital age: social interaction via digital surrogates. This performative work again may continue indefinitely, reliant only on access to an internet connection.

This reliance on digital media is also reflected in the general ethos of Working for Change, which strives to maintain connections with both the Biennale and the outside world. Karroum has insisted upon dialogue with pavilions facing political and societal changes, including China and Egypt. The discussions are also filmed and put online, ensuring that Working for Change is both capable of fostering new dialogue within the Biennale, and making this accessible in a larger context. This act similarly allows Karroum to investigate the position of art within both the Biennale and the national country, with the discussions highlighting any discrepancies between the two. Furthermore, satellite television broadcasts BBC and Al-Jazeera in the project space, allowing the artists and curators to keep up-to-date. As Karroum suggests, today the media moves faster than art: the inclusion of the television therefore narrows this gap, helping Working for Change remain connected to world events, and potentially reflect them instantly.

Working for Change then certainly fulfils its title. Instead of a singular exposition, the momentum of this exhibition ensures its efficacy as an active movement, considering both the position of art in society, and suggesting a way for art to directly affect that society – by being intrinsically linked to it. Each artist reflects an area of the interaction of art and society, and their staggered occupation of the Biennale and the extension in Rabat that will occur later prevents any stagnation of the project. Furthermore, the project’s presence online, continually accessible, means the work being done here will remain influential outside the temporal limits of a fixed-term exhibition. Tied directly to Karroum’s conviction that today’s political scenarios are linked to the activist work of artists, Working for Change is symptomatic of a longer-term commitment to art as social change.

Think back to the last socially-responsible art exhibition you saw. Now consider the example of Working for Change. Which do you think will be the most influential?

Jen Owen

www.radioapartment22.com

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Georgian Pavilion: Any-Medium-Whatever

Artist: Tamara Kvesitadze

Curator: Henk Slager

Venue: Palazzo Pisani S. Marina

Simultaneously seductive and disturbing, the undulating forms employed by Tamara Kvesitadze in Any-Medium-Whatever allude to some of the most oppressive methods utilised by humans in their struggle to inhabit the earth. Yet Kvesitadze’s social agenda is not expressed explosively, or as a militant call-to-arms screeching out at the viewer. Instead, it is her sedate methodology that lends this exhibition its poignant impact, as by illuminating the darker elements of human nature and positing a feasible alternative, Kvesitadze manages to communicate important insights to the viewer both aesthetically and conceptually.

Having already exhibited at the Venice Biennale in a 2007 group show, this solo exhibit has offered Kvesitadze the opportunity to revisit her concerns on a larger scale. But while admitting that her focus on the aesthetic has slackened (a primary factor guiding her self-confessed “romantic” exhibit Man/Woman back in 2007), it is clear that the visual still plays an important role in imparting Kvesitadze’s conceptual intentions to the viewer.

Any-Medium-Whatever features five works that consider the past, present or future consequences of human territorialisation, and our interactions as a species. It also begins with the end: Untitled, a sculptural-yet-painterly image of the debris left lingering once life has passed away provides a striking opening, with appliqué objects appearing to bleed back into their support, as the connections between them slowly erase. But Untitled also shares the space with the mechanical gestures of F=-F, which dictates the atmosphere of the area and inflects upon our reading of the artwork, preventing it being considered in isolation as an aesthetic object. Untitled is, according to the curator Henk Slager, a “conceptual anchorpoint”, both a history and a future, related to the struggles for territorialisation occurring elsewhere in the exhibition.

From consequence, one progresses to cause. A paragon of rigidity, formula, of change without real change, F=-F is a mesmerising exercise in vision, both inviting one’s gaze and forcing our rejection of it in disgust. On first glance the installation appears simple, as the sleek white masks bend to and fro betraying little of the complex machinations controlling them - until one hears the gently audible sounds of machinery, or views it from the side. But within the repeated motion of these generic masks, this regimented grid format effectively draws attention to the selfish, threatening and above all pointless modes by which humans clamour to occupy space to the detriment of others. This political message, enhanced by the machine’s control and the militaristic organisation of the aesthetic is however balanced by a personal one – something Kvesitadze is keen to emphasise. And it is indeed more by allusion to ourselves, through the potential to relate these generic forms to daily interaction that this work achieves its impact, in conjunction with the simultaneous beauty and repulsion of this oscillating object.

However, if one still struggles with the message Kvesitadze wishes to express, one may find the answershanging in the dark shadows behind F=-F, as Sphere places the present state of human territorialisation in lucid perspective. Deceptively static, a closer look reveals that this work also expresses the momentum of change and mutation, while also revealing the absurdity of the temporary change in the balance of power. Featuring once more the blank faces, crowded onto a sphere reminiscent of earth, these forms push in and out in fluid motion, recalling the controlled regularity of F=-F. But here the urgency of Kvesitadze’s message becomes more intense, as the pressure of human interactions are displayed more tangibly, as the weight of the sphere bears down on the swelling faces. Furthermore, the decision to conceal the mechanics involved manage to make the viewer more subtly aware of the distorting, disturbing and quite sinister effects one person’s struggle for territory can have on those around them. And it is through this simplicity, and the universal nature of the generalised, idealised forms, that the message Kvesitadze wishes to impart – for people to consider their effect upon others, and to strive for more equal interaction – is emotively expressed to the viewer.

Yet as the title suggests, these concepts may be expressed in multiple ways, and the final static works of this exhibition also contribute to Kvesitadze’s social agenda. Disappearance once again features the generic masks, allowing it to retain congruity with the other works. But in representing the figures fading equally into oblivion, this time in a static fashion, Kvesitadze reinforces the idea that no matter how hard one strives for dominance, with the passing of time each will disappear in equal fashion.

The final work Relationship dominates the outside courtyard, and while extending the scope of the preceding works, it is also far removed from them both aesthetically and conceptually. Light layers combined with a totemic verticality provides a liberation from the soulless mutation of Sphere or F=-F, which continue to mutate without achieving equality or sustainability. Relationship is an ideal, representing a balanced vision of humanity that is not concerned with reducing the ‘other’ in order to expand, but strives to coexist harmoniously. By providing this alternative scenario, Kvesitadze manages to summarise the messages prevalent in this exhibition, whilst still maintaining the balance of attractive aesthetic and significant, meaningful expression.

Kvesitadze is deeply invested in her project, utilising here what she considers the positive platform of the Biennale to pursue a social agenda that is easily accessible to the viewer. And it is also clear that she consistently balances her political considerations with the personal pain that first inspired her to create these works. While she declares that in art “you can be a revolutionary”, it is just as important for Kvesitadze that the ideas be expressed with subtlety and deliberation, adding that this method “could perhaps bring more results than a demonstration”.

And it is clearly this unwillingness to be abrasive or militant in her pursuit of a social agenda that makes these works so effective at highlighting the means by which we reduce and affect others. By her reliance on simple (and often beautiful) aesthetic forms, combined with the at-times visible and audible mechanical processes, we become startlingly aware of the sinister processes we utilise, and which have negative effects on others. Kvesitadze makes it clear that too often one person’s success is to the detriment of others, and by the hopeful message of Relationship forces a rethink of our oblivious natures. While the simplicity of this final work is based on an idealistic vision of equality that many may wish to view as outdated, this counterpoint to F=-F and Sphere is necessary to providing us with the final impetus for change, and is an alternative that should be embraced.

Any-Medium-Whatever does not need to resort to short-lived shock tactics in order to express its poignant message. Here the works are presented without fuss or exclamation, and this subtle staging is undoubtedly what lends this exhibition its lasting resonance – probably the most important factor that will provoke us to change.

Jen Owen

1 year ago

Title: outside itself

Artist: Federico Díaz

Curator: Alanna Heiss

Venue: Arsenale Novissimo Nappa 90

Jen Owen interviews Federico Diaz:

Jen Owen: Are you excited to be working with the Venice Biennale on this installation?

Federico Diaz: I have a very close relationship with Italy – my family and I lived in Milan in the 80s. I visited the Biennale for the first time when I was nine and we’ve been there every two years ever since. So for me the Biennale is like a long-time dream, and with the new installation outside itself, I’ve now entered it.

JO: How much does this new work connect to previous themes and your general outlook on art?

FD: ‘Outside Itself’ follows up on the project Geometric Death Frequency 141, which is now at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The character and creative process are similar. In both cases, the entire form of the installation is based on algorithms and assembled by robots. ‘Outside Itself’ is a new evolutionary phase in which visitors walking through the installation have a direct impact on the resulting form.

JO: How important are aesthetic concerns? For example the black spheres?

FD: I have long been fascinated by the space we do not perceive and which is more significant for me than the reality we are able see. Our senses are limited and what is visible is not necessarily what is important. Black is the manifestation of the space that creates us. Black spheres represent photons.

JO: What do you feel will be gleaned from the finished sculpture, when all the people have come and gone and influenced its form? Do you feel it will be a ‘readable’ representation of the visitor group, or is it intended to be a more impenetrable mechanical reflection?

FD: Visitors will see three parts of the installation. The first part is the space where robots stick together the structure composed of black spheres. The second space that visitors walk through gradually fills into a monumental form made of 250,000 spheres. The third part is a projection where we see a moving structure of black dots reacting to the visitors’ movements. This projection is mapped out onto a structure made of spheres. Everything is linked and without providing a complicated explanation, people will understand that they, too, have the ability to create the final, resulting form.

JO: Your new installation is naturally very tied to the Biennale’s theme ILLUMInations. While it expands upon ideas you presented at Mass MoCA, was it designed to tie so directly in to the Venice thematic this year?

FD: Yes, ‘Outside Itself’ follows up on Geometric Death Frequency 141 very naturally. Already at MASS MoCA, the form was created by objectifying light. The black spheres represent individual photons. ‘Outside Itself’ gradually emerges as infrared sensors track people’s movements in the installation. As a result, over the course of the entire Biennale from June till September, a sort of map will be generated that will be the basis for the resulting form composed of individual spheres. The sculpture is produced from data, and the data is different every day based on how quickly people go through and what colour clothing they have on. What is responsible for this is the interaction between the photons reflecting off people’s bodies. So light is brought in by people and they then create the form.

JO: With regards to the human interactivity, how important to your work is the idea that it is merely a human presence that controls the robots? For example, is it key to your work that there is no actual direct link, merely a visual connection free from control?

FD: Each photon has a unique position both in our world and in the virtual world, in the simulation we create. Movement is not predicted. Each sphere has its own unique position that is different and changes from moment to moment. It is a system of chaos. We don’t know what outside itself will look like at the end or even how it will begin. As it would be impossible to create the object and form manually, it is adhered together by robots that directly gather information about the people. Always at the end of the day, the software evaluates the map of people’s movements and starts to build the structure out of black spheres.

JO: It is suggested that viewers of all ages and nationalities will influence the sculpture’s form, and yet they are merely reflected via sight into a mechanical process – do you feel that this moves a step beyond the social networking and human use of technology today, as the viewer merely becomes a visual stimulus with no further input than presence?

FD: When a person gets dressed in the morning, their clothing says something about their personality and the colour their psychology. Each colour reflects light differently, and this is the basis for how we perceive it and how it has an effect on us. The resulting form mirrors the social networks of the people who went through the Arsenal in the course of Biennale di Venezia. The mechanical process of the robots is the extended arm of our space we don’t perceive. Without the robots, the installation would not and could not have come into being.

JO: Regardless of the technological and mathematical links, this speaks to me about the power of spectatorship and empathetic mirroring in society. Was this something that also inspired your project?

FD: Yes, the main statement is that Art is not art if human hands bring it into existence. I want to provocatively state that what’s important is the idea. Society’s mental field. Collective morphological fields inspire me.

JO: Is it important to you that this is all mathematically programmed and carried out by machines, rather than allowing any further creative interpretation by a human? Do you often work with rationalised responses to humanity’s presence?

FD: Mathematical processes are the language of nature, but it’s not important to emphasise them. They are the essence of the installation, and the algorithms are controlled by Robots. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his book on a typing machine and the publisher did not want to publish it, arguing that the book was written by a machine. Those are the beginnings of mechanics. Without human input, the mechanism doesn’t work. Robots will stand still. Let’s understand that they are just a new perspective so that we can understand the relationships that are not visible to us.

JO: The use of identical black spheres will no doubt somewhat erase the diversity of the audience that shapes it. Was this your intention?

FD: This year I am writing the Manifesto Nero. Black is fundamental, just like White. They are borderline colours that join us with the world beyond the limits of our senses.

JO: The Venice Biennale is, much like your installation, a reflection of its constituent parts and those that come to see it. Do you have any comments on the Biennale as a collective artistic enterprise, and on the aims of this bi-annual event?

FD: The Biennale is celebrating its 116^th anniversary; it is the oldest international exhibition in the world with an enormous history. The significance and joining of all nations underlines this – and this is another reason for ILLUMInations this year.

1 year ago 1 note

Artist: Dmitri Prigov

Curator: Dimitri Ozerkov

Venue: Universita Ca’ Foscari, Dorsoduro 3246 (Calle Foscari)

Challenging the viewer from the moment they step through the dark curtains, this exhibition by Dmitri Prigov thrusts the viewer into a tense, threatening environment. Initially faced by a shrouded man banging on a manuscript and shouting in Russian, we are however acutely aware that the sounds around us are not solely accounted for by this image. Our curiosity grows, and as we step through the second set of curtains we are faced by what appears to be the true(r) source of the aggressive noises, as two men sit in chairs shouting at one another. But once again, we do not have the ‘full’ story. Casting our glances back over the forbidding curtains behind us, we move forward to continue this tense experience with the third man, who retells a story in an increasingly emphatic tone.

While this corridor of tension is intriguing, despite all attempt to linger and watch the entire sequence, it is hard to remain within the curtains for any length of time. Instead, one longs for the white space beyond the final projection. And yet even on escaping this channelled aggression, the graphic drawings and installations of Prigov are infected with the tension and anger embodied in the initial videos. While both absurd and at times disconcerting images, the noise that resonates through this exhibition, as well as our memory of the initial projections feeds into the graphic works, with sight, concealment and above all discomfort coming to the fore as the major themes expressed in Dmitri Prigov.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago

Title: Lucid Dreams

Artist: Cristiano Pintaldi

Curator: Achille Bonito Oliva

Venue: Ex Cantiere Navale, Castello 40 (San Pietro di Castello)

Rather than through the specific images themselves, it is through the labour-intensive process involved in their creation that the conceptual strength of Lucid Dreams is articulated. On viewing these works up close, the large-scale images transform into abstract configurations of red, green and blue, imitating the methods used to translate video images onto a television screen. But while relying on the methodology of the televisual medium, these paintings still manage to provoke a startling realisation of the constructed nature of images.

Pintaldi’s emphasis on the created or ‘composed’ image is conveyed through his laborious process, making one heavily aware of the method by which television transmits media images to the viewer, reducing our visual experience to unintelligible pixels. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the black and white images visible from a distance, and the RGB components visible up-close is particularly illuminating, forcing you to question the images one trusts from afar.

For Pintaldi, these images also reflect the conjunction of individual images – our own perceptions of singular events – and mass images, which we all acknowledge as ‘real’ despite their presentation to us through the edited perspective of the media. By emphasising their painterly structure, these works therefore draw our attention to the formulated media image, arousing our suspicion of these everyday Lucid Dreams.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Nato a Venezia/Born in Venice

Artist: Koen Vanmechelen

Curator: Peter Noever

Venue: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Loredan, Campo Santo Stefano 2945

Nato a Venezia (Born in Venice) is the result of a twenty-year project by Koen Vanmechelen, begun on the island of Murano, and focusing, curiously enough, on chickens. In contrast to many of the other collateral events occurring in Venice, this project is highly scientific in conception, with the two-decade study concentrating on the cross-breeding of chickens to create an ideal hybrid type. Related to the multiculturalism of historical Venice, too, this project manages to encompass notions of diversity in both culture and biology. Its only downfall, perhaps, may be that chickens do not often have strong connotations of serious artistic and scientific investigations.

Yet rather than being a ludicrous spectacle, the work is in fact presented rather sedately. A humorous touch is added in the entrance hall with an enlarged marble chicken head infiltrating the sculpture gallery of famous Venetians, but beyond the initial comedy the exhibit proves to be quite intriguing. Over the last twenty years, Vanmechelen has been cross-breeding national and regional breeds of chicken, each with their own distinctive characteristics. While each individual breed may be narrow in its specifications, through the cross-breeding a new diversity has been launched, with each new generation stronger than the last. The Venice Biennale exhibition falls on the occasion of the 15^th generation, which will be born during the Biennale.

Vanmechelen views this project as a metaphor for the evolution of human society, and while you may wish to raise your eyebrows at such pronouncements, as a scientific exploration of the diversification of a species it does provoke some interesting questions. Additional interactive research programs are running in conjunction with the ‘Cosmopolitan Chicken Project’ at the Palazzo Loredan, focusing on more human examples of diversification – therefore ensuring that some of the ideas applied through Vanmechelen’s poultry experiment can be transferred into a realm we all can relate to.

Jennifer Owen

1 year ago 2 notes

Passage 2011: An Actionistic Transalpine Drama

Artists: GÆG Wolfgang Aichner / Thomas Huber

Venue: Scuola dell`Angelo Custode

Passage 2011 is a curatorially pared back affair. There is the obligatory desk at the entrance, sporting both texts and bored invigilators and in the middle stands a jagged topped rectangular construction with screens on the long sides. The jagged top represents the alps and the novelty sized pin represents the progression of the titular passage, the depiction of which is hosted on the screens. Here we see two to three men struggling to push, lift, kick and shove a large fiberglass boat along a series of sternly unobliging screes, peaks and ravines. It’s comical, bathetic, admirably brave and pointless all at the same time. Especially when the red boat in question seem to have been hewn to the design of a toddler’s bath toy.

Nevertheless, the catalogue informs us that this mix of heroism and tragedy is exactly the point of the project. It certainly succeeds. One is left watching in awe of the physical effort for such an absurd aim. One also watches hoping to see when the explorers thoughts inevitably wander to the idea that maybe, despite completing the alpine safety and physical training, despite it being a brilliant idea (one of the few pub-plans to ascend the dizzying heights of corporate sponsorship and the ensuing obligations to execute said pub-plan) that maybe they wish they weren’t stuck in the alps, that maybe the boat should’ve been a symbolic one, or an origami one, and that, just possibly, they feel of a tinge of regret for deciding to carry a gargantuan, bright-red, comically juvenile bath toy up, and then down, one of the highest mountain ranges in the world.

João Abbott-Gribben

1 year ago 13 notes

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

Slovenian Pavilion ‘Heaters for Hot Feelings’

Artist: Mirko Bratuša

Venue: Galleria A+A, Slovene Central for Visual Art, San Marco 3073

Curator: Nadja Zgonik

Sculptor Mirko Bratuša will present his project Heaters for Hot Feelings. It will be an installation of sculpture composed of eight free-standing anthropo- and biomorphic bodies linked together in a network. Hidden electrical fittings will heat, humidify and cool the fired clay sculptures. The heat generated by the cooling of the first sculptures will be used to heat the others. A network of

connections will be set up as a system of artificial bodies which indicate their mutual dependence.

The metaphorics of an artistic system constructed in this manner are universally applicable to modern society, in which everything happens in mutual relation: amassing wealth on one side of the planet leads to poverty on the other, we are worried about the vulnerability of the ecosystem, where exploiting nature is causing increasingly severe natural disasters, and connections through social

networks trigger social unrest, which changes political systems. Mirko Bratuša’s sculptures are captured in various states of emotion. They are tactile and warm, through which they awaken our senses. At the same time the conflicted mental states which they depict indicate the psychotic aspect of our everyday lives, fears and troubles. They speak of our sense of being lost in modern culture, where it seems that we can no longer affect politics and social power relations and that it is no longer possible to halt the processes of destruction of nature. Therefore, Bratuša suggests, we have to return to elementary perceptions. This is an escape, but not in the romantic sense, to remote worlds, but to the self, to the realm of lost sensibility, as if in the apparent reality of three-dimensional film projection we were to encounter a physical, tactile and warm object. Mirko Bratuša believes that sculpture with its physical presence enables us to have an inner connection with modern technology and to personalise it. He thinks that what we have lost in the process of technological development and the ascendance of globalism and capitalist progress, in which a sense of mutual alienation has prevailed everywhere, can return to culture via individual agitation through art. From: www.galerija-bj.s

Interview with Mirko Bratuša & Nadja Zgonik

Line Magazine: How long have you known each other?

Mirko & Nadja: From the time when we were many years ago both students at the University of Ljubljana, I [Nadja] at the Faculty of Arts, studying history of art and Mirko at the Academy of Fine Arts studying sculpture.

LM: What made you select Mirko?

Nadja: Last year I was fascinated with his sculpture installation in the gallery of the former Cistercian Monastery in Kostanjevica na Krki. His way of enterining into the relation with the specific, historical and religious ambiance, connected with technological approach with heated sculptures, made me enthusiastic to think about, how to promote his work widely.

LM: What aspect does religion play in your work?

Mirko: Working for the Cistercian Church, I wasn’t accessing to space through its religious identity and didn’t consider ideological aspects at the first place. Although in the final project occured many resonances with various contexts of the church space: voyeurism of the monks, blindness for everyday problems of the church as a institution, history of religious sculpture, sexual exploration. All arrived spontaneously, without intending to stress those contextual problems too much.

What I wanted to access was the spatial sensibility for the church as the space which could represent cosmic dimensions, as well as the abstract, ideological connotations of history and tradition.

LM: Do you see technology as damnation or salvation?

Mirko: I use technology as thing through which we can get back in touch with our sensory corporeal condition. Technology has alienated us from our feeling and now with warming and cooling of sculpture I want to use it to bring us back to our elemetary sensations. Sculptures are warm and as such alive, with a help of a technological “heart”. It’s the tool to bring us back to ourselves. In a practical sense, there is a reliance on technology and tricks/mechanisms to make the inanimate animated. It can make art alive and it can make us alive.

LM: You mention a mastery over materials that you wish to achive, that you do not wish to be enslaved by it. Brancusi emphasised cooperation and collaboration – why is total mastery necessary?

Mirko: I’m choosing different materials because of their various properties and I like to respect and use them in a positive way. If I can’t express certain idea in a specific material, I move onto another one. This suggests that materials have specific qualities and abilities that one cannot work beyond to their own will – they can only work with and to the materials limits.

[LM In this case, mastery is not a form of domination but a state knowledge the ‘mastery’ being in knowing what a material will and will not do for you.]

LM: A lot of the sculptures have closed eyes, why is this?

Mirko: Closed eyes focus on the senses and the sensory. There are five ways of being present, not just one – sight can blind you to your other senses.

LM: You said that your favourite sculpture is Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz by Beuys. Beuys was a great performer as well as a sculptor, but it seems the performative aspect is absent in your work which is very static and ‘finished’.

Mirko: The performative aspect is present in a specific way, in the process of making, which is kind of “performance”, with physical presence of artists - players, sculpture and material. Also the research practices, I’m using in my work, are a form of performance, the scientific experimentation that emerges through my sculptural practice.

1 year ago 1 note

“Desire: Ideal Narratives in Contemporary South African Art” South African Pavilion

Artists: Mary Sibande, Lyndi Sales & Siemon Allen

Venue: Torre De Porta Nuova: Aresenale Nuovissimo

Curator: Thembinkosi Goniwe

Desire: Ideal Narratives in Contemporary South African Art, marks democratic South Africa’s debut at the Venice Art Biennale. Over the past 17 years, since throwing off apartheid rule and entering into the ‘club of nations’ with constitutional democracies, South Africa has emerged as a symbol of how best to fan freedom from the ashes of bondage.

South African Pavilion Artist Interview: Lyndi Sales

Line Magazine: Did you think there are any parallels between your work’s emphasis on vision and Bice Curiger’s chosen theme of illuminations?

Lyndi Sales: It wasn’t my intention to make a work that paralleled Curiger’s theme. As it happened I have spent some time investigating perception, vision and optical illusion in my work and this piece forms part of that trajectory. This began within the Blur Zone series from 2010 and evolved in the series called Astronomical seeing. It would seem that issues related to perception are being approached from a number of different vantage points of late. One thinks of the phenomenological work of Olafur Eliasson for example. So, perhaps this even had some impact on the curatorial programme, who knows?

Line: In your pieces, do you work from hand or computer generated abstractions?

Sales: Both actually. At times I begin with a microscopic image source. In my current works I began with a microscopic image of my cornea. I used images taken of my eye during a visit to the ophthalmologist where a 180 degree image was captured digitally - revealing a three-dimensional image of the surface of my cornea. I often work by hand with pen and ink and washes on paper. I find it best to work blindfolded so that I am not aware of my mark making. I am experimenting with a method of creating a kind of automatic repetitive mark that is part of a meditative process. My images are harnessed from this space and I then retraced them on computer. Within this experimental meditative space I also draw with a computer pen to create my abstractions. I interfere with these patterns - it also introduces a way for me to build a certain kind of entropy or chaos or tension into something that is stable like a given system or code. The work is a result of a wrestling process of perception - I interpret and reinvent the pattern over and over again as I finalise the work.

Line: How do you choose the type of shape you’re going to morph, replicate and overlay?

Sales: I have always been interested in the diagrams or visualisation systems that are created to help us view and understand information, statistics etc. Visualizations systems made by plotting points such as the connection points of internet servers across the globe, flight route paths and satellite maps -have all been a source of inspiration in previous works. In my recent work on show in Venice I distorted a combination of scans of my eye with astronomical maps. As mentioned above these scans or microscopic images of my eye were taken with the help of an ophthalmologist using a 180-degree camera to capture the surface of my cornea. I am interested in all forms of optical illusions. I look at microscopic images in nature and atomic structures for inspiration as well as Google sky and Hubble images of the universe. Science museums are one of my favourite places to visit when I am travelling and have become a huge source of inspiration. I spent some time at an observatory in South Africa and pay close attention to the way in which telescopes and other optical aids are created.

Line: Do you think it is harder to tackle social issues, such as a desire for democracy, with abstract art? Can its non-representative nature leave it open to appropriation and misinterpretation?

Sales: The abstract is an innately political space because of what you raise - it allows interpretation to flourish, for better or worse. But artists are not there to police interpretation. As my work evolves it seems to become more and more abstract due to metaphysical interests for which this manner of working seems appropriate, and one would hope that there remains scope to investigate ontological issues that remain part of social concerns. I think all work is open to appropriation and misinterpretation and that in itself is a political space - one where cultural and symbolic capital is given value or stripped of it. What is worth bearing in mind is that as evocative as art is, it is open to multiple interpretations. The interpretations that are important are those that end up adding value, in creating new possibilities of reading the world - in adding fresh insight. And how the viewer interprets the work is often a reflection on themselves in that their understanding of the work is perceived through their own filters.

Line: How did you feel about Zwelethu Mthethwa’s resignation because of what he perceived to be corruption in the selection making process?

Sales: None of us were privy to the mechanisms behind the genesis of the show and I respect that Zwelethu felt the inclination to pull out when his desire for more clarity was not initially met. It was a surprise to see him go after he had signed on, but he made the decision that he felt he needed to at the time. He has been very supportive teacher and it would certainly have been great to have him involved. His work is internationally respected. As emerging artists the rest of us faced a difficult set of circumstances, but decided to embrace the curatorial strategy and put on our best show. Siemon and Mary are extremely talented and dedicated artists and it was an honour to be on show with them in what feels like a very worthwhile exhibition. I think Thembinkosi’s curatorial decision brought out gentle nuances in all the work in quite an unexpected way.

As democracy has emerged, so has South Africa’s role in the global art world. South African artists have received considerable global attention, especially those working in the realm of contemporary art — as do the three artists represented in Desire. Many of the country’s artists have long been closely followed by the international art world, the interest spurred in part by the obvious, as well as more subtle, links between this art and democracy.

It is only apt, then, that the works in Desire offer three approaches to re-thinking the ideals and experiences promised by democracy. Here, desire is taken to mean yearning and need, recognising what individuals do not have, but long for. The notion of desire suggests both a lack as well as alluding to the simple motivation behind many human actions and deeds. Desire speaks to crisis and determination. It is an unrelenting force. Nothing is inert, complete and fixed about desire. Neither is desire tangible. It is rather a mystical force that exists in the form of imagination, the aspiring agent inherent with the power to dream. And, desire is the source of both creativity and of art.

Democracy in South Africa provides enabling conditions for artists to explore works of art that centralise their desires, to explore subjects that were no longer restricted to oppressive conditions primarily concerned with apartheid and its consequences. Post-apartheid art tackles a variety of subjects ranging from memory, history and culture to the self, the body, psyche and emotions. Representations of these subjects are imaginative and poetic, more so rendered in subtle and nuanced ways that avoid political over-determinancy. These representations engage the meaning and value of life in the social realm at its most complex and ambiguous levels. Through the works of Mary Sibande, Lyndi Sales and Siemon Allen, the exhibition Desire presents some of these South African artistic developments at the Venice Biennale.

From: www.sa-venice-biennale.com

1 year ago

” Le Cercle Fermé” Luxembourg Pavilion

Venue: Ca’ del Duca, 3052 Corte Del Duca Sforza

Artists: Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil

Curator: Kevin Muhlen, Jo Kox

Anybody interested in the work of Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil soon realises that the notion of space is central to it. This is also the case in the artwork presented for the 2011 Venice Biennale. The observer is presented with a single idea: the obvious necessity of finding a new type of space. At the root of their work is an awareness that sensorial perception has physiological limits – and that our conception of space is historically dated. Henceforth, in the wake of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, it is a case of trying to go beyond the limit of a place to find a new one. This comes down to thinking about the meaning of the limit and the meaning of space which is mainly the result of tradition. The important thing is not to overstep or transgress the law by crossing the limit but to ‘‘open’’ a space at the very heart of the former space.

This opening does not create new space to occupy, but rather a sort of pocket hidden inside the old meaning of the limit. It is about an opening in space according to the principle of slippage. This internal slippage and the recreation of space always implies the destruction of an institution. The meaning of the word “space” is profoundly destabilised. In this, our two artists are very topical because the management of space is in crisis. This space we think of as living space is simultaneously a space of action, orientation and communication. The development of science and technology, the erosion of particular visions of the world and traditional value systems, the structural crisis of the economy and the exacerbation of the issue of logic question a traditional conception of space and management that only thinks in terms of fields of competence and is obsessed with the constraints of growth and valorisation. We live in a period of mutation in which past models of orientation and action no longer work. Certainly, the situation still seems open, but we lack concepts of action capable of responding to the ecological crisis and the crisis of civilisation we are currently experiencing without endangering democracy, human rights and the physical necessities of life. Today, there is no doubt that it is more urgent than ever to consider any reflection on the question of space as a work of civilisation, as a remodelling of civilisation. Modifying the everyday completely remodels our world, and that is what this is all about. The artwork can be understood on various different levels that touch as much on philosophy as on art history or society.

From: www.casino-luxembourg.lu

Luxembourg Pavilion Interview: Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil

Line Magazine: I thoroughly enjoyed your pavilion and the accompanying texts; both struck me as extremely rigorous and multi-layered. How long did it take for you to conceive of the pavilion in situ? Was the design finalised and executed exactly to plan, or did it continue to develop organically as you were installing it?

Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil: When we conceived the project ‘le cercle fermé’, we had a deadline to follow and worked very intensively on it in a sort of state of urgency, it came out in a very direct and fresh way.

We had a precise idea of the general plan of the installation and its logic in the succession of the different rooms and about the lecture that we wanted to give to the work as a whole.

During the realisation and the setting of the work we took some freedom in the spatial arrangement of the different elements, but by trying to keep coherence to the original idea we had.

Line: When René Kockelkorn [curator and writer of an introductory text] talks about the decline of particular visions of the world in reference to what the pavilion represents, he states:

“The development of science and technology, the erosion of particular visions of the world and traditional value systems, the structural crisis of the economy and the exacerbation of the issue of logic question a traditional conception of space and management that only thinks in terms of fields of competence and is obsessed with the constraints of growth and valorisation.”

What is meant here by “the exacerbation of the issue of logic”?

Feipel & Bechameil: In his introduction to the structural crises of conception of spatial management René Kockelkorn certainly wanted to speak in particularity about the logic, a logic which intends to be very functional, understandable and readable, and in the believe of doing well, this logic has his own limits. It is a logic through deduction and which in moments of chaos responds with practical solutions to all the problems and come to an end of it, where this solutions reach their limits.

Line: When Paul Virilio [author of another introductory text] says “…the 20th century was marked by two concepts – destruction and deconstruction…” do you mean Derridean deconstruction? If so,

Why do you think its import is absent for this century?

Feipel & Bechameil: The new manifests of the millennium does not anymore question so much the shape of cities and urbanism but the way of the connecting networks. It is a desorientation of the individual inside a network that make up the new modernity. Mankind was convinced of being carried by a flow, but he is lost in a network. In that respect the questioning and theories of the 20^th century turn out being dated, because they situate the individual at the center of the society, while the societies got connected to a network of which they ignore the limits or the end of it.

Line: Where do you see the artistic practice of the Luxembourg pavilion in relation to Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenmann and Daniel Libeskind’s architectural responses to Derridean deconstruction?

Feipel & Bechameil: According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural deconstructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal construction, a strongly – established conventional expectation to play flexibly against. (Derrida, Of Grammatology)

By starting from an archetypal house, architects like Tschumi, Eisenmann and Libeskin altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and other expectations in a playful subversion, an act of ‘’de’’ construction.

In this way we certainly relate to those architects, because we start off from an context, a classical structure, which is here the typical venitien flat, to ‘break up’ its volumes, its shapes and its meaning in a playful subversion and in an act of ‘de’ construction as well. It is the ‘opening up’ or ‘breaking free’ of a space within its traditional space; an opening that revels a hidden soul enclosed in the original space.

Our installation is called ‘le cercle fermé’ because we thought that the spaces of Ca del Duca and its circular way of walking through it had something to do with Venise and with the space itself. It is picking up this circularity that we tried to de-construct the circularity by a geometry that encloses the circle into an exploration of new possibilities. By basing our project on the context of the space and the city and its meanings, and by ‘de’structuring the main elements on which it relies, we tried to unfold the space of this apartment into new possibilities.

Line: When René Kockelkorn said of the pavilion:

“It is like a counter-image to veduta painting, which perpetuates and glorifies the historical image. They [the artists] show us the Leggenda nera, the dark side.”

I understood the first part to mean that the work is meant to explore the ongoing abstract process of history – that of constant flux and indeterminacy.

But the Leggenda nera of the second sentence refers to two very specific historical theories. One refers to Venice (that it’s own decadence and debaucheries were the cause of its downfall) and the other to the Spanish Inquisition (that the brutality of the inquisition was emphasized by protestant scholars to discredit Catholicism).

How does the work reconcile these two statements?

Feipel & Bechameil: René opposes two ways of speaking about venise: the ‘verduta’ which glorifies the city and its history and he refers to the ‘leggenda nera’ as way to show the dark side of it.

Venice is very much a city of representation and image (‘fronts’ that seem unpenetrable). Venice embodies this ambiguity about it, through history is been on one hand a city opened to the world from Augsburg to Constantinoble, keeping up a flowering commerce with neighboring countries and showing its richness and glories, but on the other hand having a profound distrust in his neighbors and cultivating a tradition of secret of its commerce and politics. In order to keep the secrets of its transactions it was able to arrest or ban those tempted to revel them.

The architecture of the city; the palaces and grandiose churches testify of the political, military and economical power and wealth of the time.

Julian Juderias speaks about the ‘Leggenda nera’ to criticize Spain’s inquisition and brutality to persecute the protestants in the XVII century.

René uses this term not to speak about the inquisition in Spain, but to speak about our way of representing the society and city of Venice and the way we situated our work toward the context in which it takes place. A vision that reveals the flip-side of the coin and not the glorifying image. Revealing its cracks, fragility and weakness

Our work is somehow reflecting the cities and its society, and the way of cultivating a tradition of secret and a way of hiding behind its fronts. You get locked in this space, withholding the secrets and guided around the spaces (doors you can not open, reflection of spaces you can not access) without revealing itself completely.

Line: I found the architectural rendering of the current state of flux, destabilisation and globalisation extremely acute, but in the accompanying texts there is a noticeable abstinence from making any value judgements on the worldview you are representing.

Do you or the artists have any personal opinion on what you describe and articulate in the work, do you think the current situation is – to put it crudely – a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing?

Feipel & Bechameil: We think that the current situation is reflected in our work, it’s a moment of crisis and disorientation on a economic, political, ideology and social level throughout the world. We believe it’s a very rich and intense moment of de-structuration and uncertainty it leads to new solutions and ways of thinking and dealing with problems.

Through our work we don’t want to state a dogma of our beliefs for people to follow and we don’t intend to make judgment on the current situation. We rather prefer to loosen up structures and to experiment. We offer the visitor to share a physical and mental experience we us.

Line: Did you have any reservations with making something so aesthetically enjoyable? Did you ever worry that visitors might wonder through and only enjoy it superficially, but miss all the hard work you’ve put in with the theory?

Feipel & Bechameil: Our main concern was to realise a work meaningful to us, the fact that it can be aesthetically enjoyable, we don’t take it as a discredit. The work can be received at different levels, which we consider as a quality. We want to share an experience generously with people.

We wish to keep the work open and loose, and to let people in. It’s for people to make their own story out of it and to discover it and deepen it. It has been very much structured and thought by us, but we think it is a good thing that it does not reveal this effort through heaviness, but people can just take from it what they want. (without having the feeling of being left out, if it gets to complex)

Line: On a similar theme, what process do the artists go through when extrapolating works and ideas from other texts and writers? Do you have an idea for a piece, then go hunting around for texts on a similar theme, or do pieces evolve from reading a text?

Feipel & Bechameil: To start with there is a vision or a sense for something that is meaningful for us that we want to express and that art allows us to do so. Thoughts and theory that we came along over the years, and that excite us and theories we turn inside out in our heads are present when we conceive the project. They flow naturally into our work.

When we work out the installation more concretly, we decided partly intuitively but also guided by this ideas and vision we have in mind. The theory and the visual/practical aspect of things evolve in parallel.

Then we look things up again and search around the issues that occupy our mind. With René we had a close relationship where we discuss our ideas and where he brought his references to the work.

Line: Finally, beyond Derrida, have any other writers or artists had such a marked impact on your works?

Feipel & Bechameil: The universe of Jorge Luis Borges and its way of constructing and describing mental and physical spaces of infinity and derivations of the reality certainly influenced our work.

The work of Gordon Matta-Clark and its way of breaking up existing structures and buildings is since a long time been very important to us. Gaston Bachelard, Anthony Vidler, Piranesi..etc

1 year ago 1 note

A Virtual Biennale

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