A Virtual Biennale

Title: Ireland

Artist: Corban Walker

Curator: Eamonn Maxwell

Venue: Santa Maria della Pietà, Castello 3701

While literally composing three separate installations, Corban Walker’s productions for the Irish pavilion co-habit rather curiously. While all are concerned with both the nature of the site and Walker’s own artistic investigations into space and the built environment, the sensations emitted by the central sculpture are quite distinct from those suggested by the vinyl-clad windows of the Istituto Santa Maria Della Pietà.

The vinyl works are modular pieces, aesthetically minimalist but configured from rigid mathematical principles derived from Walker’s own height and perspective. Resembling the stained glass of churches, these windows are only partially obscured and remain see-through, a visual metaphor for the manners in which we engage with architecture: both occupying and transitioning through the spaces around us.

The central sculptural form, on the other hand, is formed from over one hundred stainless steel cubes which appear precariously stacked in a pile in the middle of the floor. Towering above the viewer, an obstacle in our path between the vinyl works, we must navigate around the object in a style the windows do not require. Yet this work is also transparent, allowing visitors both to appreciate the regularity of the forms, but also to consider how the structure fits these surroundings, occupying space – again alluding to our personal interactions with our environment.

1 year ago 3 notes

Title: Venice: MARIVERTICALI

Artist: Fabrizio Plessi

Curator: Renzo Dubbini

Venue: Giardini

What are the stereotypes of Venice? Curved round the Venice Pavilion, gondolas stand vertically, reaching the ceiling. Screens run the entire length of the gondolas, illuminated by images of water. The colour blue saturates the entire pavilion, as the sound of water fills the space with its trickling. Eluding itself into what can only be described as a homage to Venice. The incredibly simple execution is harmless, and quite sweet really.

Jemma Craig

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Ancension

Artist: Anish Kapoor

Curator: Collateral Event

Venue: Basilica di San Giorgio Maggoire

Ascension is a site-specific installation by Anish Kapoor, one of the leading figures in the international field of contemporary art. The work has previously been presented in Brazil, China and Italy, yet it takes on a new meaning in the spiritual context of Venice’s Basilica di San Giorgio. Rising to the challenge of creating something no contemporary artist has done within the space, Kapoor rises to the challenge in an attempt to give form to the immaterial. Respecting the location’s spiritual and consecrated space, Ascension takes on an entirely new stance, “What interests me is the idea of immateriality becoming an object, which is exactly what happens in Ascension: the smoke becomes a column. Also, present in this work is the idea of Moses following a column of smoke, a column of light, in the desert.”

The site-specific installation is placed at the intersection between the nave and the transept. A tornado of smoke ascends from the circular base on the floor to an enormous extractor fan in the ceiling. The circular base is surrounded by 4 pillars lined with fans, these aim to direct the smoke to the extractor fan in the ceiling. Sadly, as is only natural with site-specific installations, there were some technical difficulties. Ventilation from the church’s entrances diffuses the smoke, and its dispersion of light made it just visible in the daytime. Rather disappointingly, the smoke disintegrated after only a few meters in the air.

Jemma Craig

1 year ago

Title: United States of America: Gloria

Artist: Jennifer Allora, Guillermo Calzadilla

Venue: Giardini

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, the U.S. Pavilion’s chosen artists, present their exhibition Gloria for the 54^th Venice Biennale. Their work puts forward a stereotypical view of America, one of joviality and over compensation through an excess of funding. Combining sculpture, performance, video and sound elements, the works use poetic shock and unexpected juxtaposition to reflect on competitive enterprises, ranging from the Olympic Games to international commerce to the military industrial complex. The title, Gloria, has the ability to reference military, religious, Olympic, economic and cultural grandeur, allowing this exhibition to cover all bases, but never really pinpointing on something solid.

The design of the exhibition is poor considering the funding that would have presumably been provided, and yet on another level – perhaps more likely for two conceptually rigorous artists - Allora and Calzadilla are playing up to this stereotypical view that many other cultures hold of America. In a society that has so many misconceptions as to what that specific culture truly is, this buoyant and almost self-critical viewpoint is refreshing, if a little over the top.

Emily Burke

1 year ago 2 notes

Title: Catalonia and the Balearic Islands Project

Artist: Mabel Palacin

Curator: David G. Torres

Venue: Dorsoduro 265, Venezia

Adopting a new approach that is different from the previous editions, it aims to open up the formats and presentation possibilities for projects in future editions.

180 refers to what in cinematography is known as the 180 degree rule; according to this, the camera, as it takes shots and counter-shots, must never cross an imaginary line, because to do so would cause confusion regarding the spatial relationship of the characters. It is this axis of action that defines the position of the characters with respect to the screen so that the viewer is never left spatially disorientated, this imaginary axis defined by the 180 degree rule ensures the relation between the images and the viewer is always the right one. In short, what it emphasises and in a way exemplifies is the relation between images and viewer in the representation of reality. Mabel Palacin’s project takes this cinematographic rule as a reference point to oberserve how the relations between image, reality and the viewer have changed.

Celyn Bricker interviews Mabel Palacin:

Celyn Bricker: The project Mabel Palacin 180º is described as ‘a response to the loss of the link that used to exist between a photograph and reality’. In what way do you consider this link to have broken down? What was it specifically that triggered the concept of this work?

Mabel Palacin: 180º is the result of several thoughts about the changes and challenges that contemporaneity poses to the images. In order to exist, at the present time an image needs to be reproduced once and over again, generally in different formats or supports, thus images are not longer linked to a single format. When we reproduce an image in a different context, format or support, the image changes into a new reinterpretation. In a digital context the multiplicity of formats and the images intensity and its speed of circulation affect the spectator, so they modify him. This fact introduces a new spectator which is more active and makes bigger the images production process broadening it to the moment of the interpretation. Thus, the distinction between a fixed image and an image in movement has no more sense because the image is no longer a fixed image, no matter what the format is.

The digital image has “broken” the connection between photography and reality, although when we talk about an image token by a camera there will always be a kind of connection. This links is being re-written, re-negotiated, 180º, as other projects, is another possibility of this re-writing. It’s not definitive and closed, it’s just another option. It also happens in other works I’ve been working through.

Specifically, 180º means the achievement of a big image and that’s why it’s done by so many images that aloud us to turn the details into a long shot. After, this image is fragmented in different ways, following cinematographic rules and becoming a video reinterpretation or arranging the fragments in a book. Neither of these versions is definitive, they open a process that sets the image in motion. Besides, the image includes the point of view of several figures that appear on it and, looking over the axle of the camera, expand the image recovering the city, a new and different vision of the city.

The main point of 180º is the change of the spectator’s position regarding to the images, the idea of an image that explodes in the way that its fragments can be rebuilt once and over again with different interpretations. Thus, the spectator is not just a “spectator”, he becomes a part of the image giving sense to the image, he also makes new versions of the images and his point of view is included in there.

CB: Your work is also described as seeking to ‘lay the groundwork for reconstructing the use of images in art’. This is a fascinating but very big statement – how do you see Mabel Palacin: 180º as reconstructing this ‘groundwork’?

MP: I do not describe it in that way. It’s regarding to the way the images can work, but not just in the world of art. 180º tries to fix a statement able to show how images run, this running says that they are not fixed images, they need to circulate, to be in motion from one support to another, and no-one is better because they co-exist making the image independent from a format and able to include many points of view. The project installation also suggests different ways of getting in touch with the images and represents them all together.

CB: If it is laying the groundwork for a new use of the image - photographic or otherwise – how do you see other artists responding to Mabel Palacin: 180º?

MP: 180º is not a closed work, so what we have presented in Venice is the first step of a process. Some fragments of this image have been given to other people, not necessary artists, that will take part in its interpretation and will complete the project. Thus, the project will be closed in autumn including other new parts. That’s why for me it’s too soon to consider any response regarding to other artists.

CB: Did you choose the image of Venice that you chose for a particular reason, or was it largely secondary to the concept underlying the project?

MP: To develop the project in Venice seemed to me very interesting because I wanted to reflect on the relationship we have with images and Venice is such a special city because we all have in our mind an image of the city. For the main image I looked for a specific location, a location that wouldn’t reveal immediately its belonging to Venice. A street, a fragment of the city, with a group of buildings where the scene could be developed. The chosen buildings belong to a kind of architecture more international, in a certain “liberty” style that we could see in many other cities. After, there are the figures, the actors, a human landscape with different features, as in any other city we would find.

1 year ago

Title: Singapore: The Cloud of Unknowing

Artist: Ho Tzu Nyen

Curator: June Yap

Venue: Salone di Ss. Filippo e Giacomo, Museo Diocesano di Venezia

In a perfect location, known for some of the greatest paintings of celestial skies and dramatic heavens of the heavens, the viewer is immersed into a pitch-black room with giant white beanbags occupying the floor space.

Set in a low-income public housing scheme in Singapore, Ho presents each of the 8 characters in an encounter with the cloud as either a vapourous mist or embodied as a figure. Taking on the phenomenon of the cloud, Ho intends to explore their hallucinatory and transcendent abilities. As the encounter takes place, a shift occurs that effects in a direct experience of the senses, instead of being understood by the mind.

Jemma Craig

Jemma Craig interviews Ho Tzu Nyen

JC: You kept a fairly low profile since the release of HERE. What does it mean to you to represent Singapore in the Venice Biennale?

HTN: Since the premiere of HERE at the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival in 2009, I have been actually quite busy with a number of projects. In that same year, I made EARTH, a 42 min film, which was commissioned by the Singapore Arts Festival, and performed with a live score by the Singaporean band The Observatory in a show called ‘Invisible Room’. This same work was shown at the Theater der Welt in Germany in 2010. The film EARTH itself premiered as a film at the Venice Film Festival in 2009, and it was later shown in a number of film festivals such as the Rotterdam Film Festival. In 2009, I was also commissioned to produce 2 works for the Asia-Pacific Triennial at Brisbane, Australia. In 2010, I had a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia and in 2011, I had a solo exhibition at Artspace, Sydney as part of the Sydney Arts Festival. These are just some of the commissions and exhibitions that I can name, and all of these are important in their own right, in relation to the regions and circuits in which they are located – for example, the Asia Pacific Triennial is regarded by some as one of the most important art exhibitions in the region implied by its name, just as the Theater der Welt is considered by some as the most important performing arts festival in Germany. But all of these projects and shows are important to me.

As such, I feel that I should perhaps begin by questioning the phrasing of the question – namely “fairly low profile” according to what standards of evaluation? The question seems to imply that of all my recent activities, only my participation in Cannes is equivalent to participation in the Venice Biennale, but I feel that such an evaluation is problematic in its inflation of particular events that are tied to certain regimes of power, while de-valuing other events that may have regional, or local significance.

This is perhaps the best way that I can begin to answer your question. I am honored that I was selected to produce an artwork for the Singapore Pavilion, as much as I am honored by my selection in any other events. All that matters to me is that this commission came with an opportunity, and a budget, to produce a new work. The new work is all that matters to me, and the “profiling” is just a secondary effect which is completely subjective and arbitrary. The only concrete thing is the work itself.

JC:The Cloud of Unknowing was directly inspired by a 14th century mystical treatise on faith. What is the importance of this message in representing the Singapore Pavilion?

HTN: The Cloud of Unknowing was as much inspired by the mystical treatise of the same name as by a number of paintings in which clouds play a special role. These paintings range from canonical paintings of the European tradition and traditional Chinese landscape paintings.

I do not know if this work – or any of my works contain any “messages”. I am inclined to think that a work of art is not involved in the dissemination of messages, as an advertisement, or a propaganda campaign is designed to do so.

For me, a work of art is a kind of machine for generating sensations and affects, which cannot be translated into the realm of language – and hence the difficulty of speaking about “messages”. Think for example about Cezanne’s numerous paintings of apples. These are objects that are undoubtedly considered as “artworks” – but what messages do they carry?

I am convinced that my work expresses the milieu in which I come from in some way, just as an organism’s behavior expresses the ecosystem in which it is enmeshed. But this mode of expression is beyond what we commonly understand as “representation”.

JC: By looking at forms of illumination, luminance and transport through the exploration of histories, comes the subject of clouds. It appears that the cloud symbolises both an obstacle and a reconciliation of man to infinity. Would you agree?

HTN: Clouds are floating paradoxes. They are ever-present yet ungraspable, and formless.

I think of the works I do, in particular The Cloud of Unknowing as a cloud in a very specific sense. I believe that most of us, at some point in our lives look up at the clouds drifting through the sky, and imagine that we see something concrete in them – an animal, a face, or a landscape. What happens here is that we, as spectators of clouds, are using our imagination and memory in order to “complete” the suggestion provided by the amorphous cloud. In this same way, I hope viewers can make sense of my work – placing an extra emphasis on the pro-active nature of the activity of “making” sense. In other words, my work is simply a cloud, with which the viewer must use his or her own powers to complete.

JC: The Cloud of Unknowing is characterised by an investigation into important cultural moments. This isn’t the first time you have interrogated cultural histories. As a recurring theme, do you feel a responsibility as an artist to document such appropriate and important themes?

HTN: The “important cultural moments” that The Cloud of Unknowing refers to are simply the number of paintings, films, poems and songs that are compressed and condensed into the work. I guess great artworks can be considered as events – and hence “cultural moments”. With The Cloud of Unknowing, I am not sure if such “moments” were interrogated. Rather it might be more accurate to say that I have gathered them and tried to open them up to new forms of relations.

Increasingly, I feel that my “responsibility as an artist” is towards art – which I understand as the realm of sensations and affects. For sure I am open to the idea that artworks form a kind of document of the sensibilities of the time and place in which they come from, and they have an important function as objects of contemplation by which analyses can be drawn. However, I do not regard my own practice as documentary in intention.

JC: Do you often incorporate film into your art? Do you feel that this medium is most successful?

HTN: My artworks most often take the form of the audio visuals, by which I mean that they often involve images and sounds, combined in particular ways. A common way of classifying these combinatory constellations of images and sounds is to regard them as “films” if they are shown in the cinema, or as “video art” if they are shown in the context of contemporary art, within museums and galleries.

I am not sure if “films” or “videos” can be considered the “most successful,” because there continues to be unlimited potential is all forms of practice. I only work with “films” and “videos” because they continue to exercise a fascination for me.

JC: Would you agree that physicality within art helps illustrate the primary concepts? For example, the smoke machine that will act as the cloud to endorse the viewer to produce a direct experience of the senses.

HTN: I would agree that “physicality” is a crucial dimension of artworks, though I would disagree that “physicality” can be understood as “illustrations” of “primary concepts”. I tend to think that the most interesting and powerful artworks are not “illustrative” of anything. Rather the conceptual premises of such artworks tend to be directly enfolded into its physical manifestation. To put this in another way, the most interesting artworks are those that engage directly the senses.

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Montebello - Megachromia

Artist: Montebello

Curator: Adrien Goetz

Venue: Casino Venier

Colour saturates the first exhibition space of Casino Venier from the light-boxes that are dotted around the room. Placed in semi-darkness, the viewer’s attention is immediately pulled to the technique of brushwork presented on the illuminated boxes. Obsessed with optical equipment and devices, Montebello has produced and defined the term “megachromia” that can easily described as homage to photography and painting, “megachromia” is the result of a specific process, presented in the form of light-boxes.

Montebello puts a new spin on the expectations of painting and photography. Whilst painting captures movement, photography captures texture. By reversing their roles, Montebello strengthens the final result by creating something entirely new. Furthermore, he hints that the painting and photography can be a result of the same process. On glancing at the works, one can determine the close relationship between abstraction and representation.

Montebello abandons colour and matter in relation to painting. Instead, he focuses on the technique and the brushwork. Really, then, it poses as the ultimate for an artist – to express his abilities in a clear and poignant way. However, by demoralising such attributes of painting, one can question whether we can ever gain a sense of the subject? It tends to focus solely on technique and brushwork, and we all know that is only one factor of producing a painting. Reflecting on such issues that nobody has expressed before is very appropriate in the face of contemporary art today. But the aspect of painting before your subjects in order to better illustrate the techniques is limiting.

The second space in the gallery includes the paintings themselves. Beautifully curated, the question “where is the work?” circulates. In the tension between the paintings and light-boxes, the secrets and movements are revealed.

Jemma Craig

1 year ago 10 notes

Title: Ukraine: Post vs Proto Renaissance

Artist: Oksana Mas

Curator: Achille Bonito Oliva & Oleksiy Rogotchenko

Venue: Chiesa di San Fantin & Campo San Stae

Developed from the custom of painting wooden eggs in traditional decoration during Easter, Oksana Mas attempts to reclaim the sphere as a geometric space holding within itself a principle of oneness. Mas distributed the eggs and asked a number of inmates in women’s penitentiaries, intellectuals and people working in various fields from more than 42 countries to paint them.

Ancient and modern art combine, embracing stories of sins and dreams of redemption. The iconographical reference to the Van Eyck brothers forms the basis for the work. Taking parts of the Ghent Altarpiece, Mas recreates it with her 3,640,000 eggs. When put together, the eggs create a structure that evokes a mosaic in which the eggs’ iconographic tattoos constitute the single elements. As you step closer to the work, it breaks down as if it were a digital file.

Jemma Craig

Jemma Craig: You have been working on “Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance” for several years now. Are you excited to finally present it in the Venice Biennale?

Oksana Mas: Certainly it is very honorable for every artist to present his or her country at Venice Biennale. Biennale is a world exhibition, intended not only to display artworks but rather as representative collection that allows estimate contemporary art’s course of development. So artists participating in the Biennale must be daring and without fear offer novice concepts, novice aesthetics, novice solutions, further promoting art development and perfection. “Ghent altarpiece” is a courageous project, “total”, as Achille Bonito Oliva called it, very power- and labor-intensive. In Venice there are only eight fragments presented that is less than 10% of a planned work that will consists out of 303 fragments, its size will be 90 by 134 meters, and it will be made out of more than 3.5 millions of ornamented eggs. The project is coming along and I plan to complete it in 5 – 8 years. But even now the Ukrainian Pavilion hosted by San Fantin church where there are exhibited five out of eight fragments is visited on average by 1600 persons every day, while at “museum night” there were more than 3700 persons. I believe that it is unequivocal evidence of public’s interest in the project. Another installation is located at campo San Stae at Canale Grande embankment where there are three more fragments presented.

The project is very interesting also because every new presentation will be inevitably different because of new fragments added, new exhibition space while exhibition space is very important as light, sound and the soul itself of a space are essential elements of the exposition.

JC: You displayed 15,000 eggs in St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev. At the Venice Biennale, the installation is composed of 102,000 wooden eggs – which is a monumental installation. Is this your largest piece?

OM: Yes. In Sophia Cathedral I’ve presented the first large scale mosaic made of wooden ornamented eggs. St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is one of the most ancient in Europe, it have been constructed in XI century, and preserves its original appearance, ancient architecture, houses the most complete complex of XI century mosaics and wall paintings. It is the outstanding monument of worldwide importance, recorded in UNESCO list of World Heritage. “Oranta” is my gift to Ukraine. “Ghent altarpiece” is for sure much larger not only in size and in number of people involved in its creation, but also in grandeur of Van Eyck primary concept implemented in the original whose modern interpretation I offer.

JC: It seems as though you are heavily influenced with custom and tradition, particularly of Ukraine. Do you feel a sense of responsibility to deliver and represent Ukraine as best as you can?

I have turned to the applied art relatively not long ago, before I used to work in painting and graphics, where I used my own, patented techniques. But I’ve always been interested in finding universal language that is why I looked for symbols that are easily recognizable to any person. The project presented at the Biennale is really based on traditional forms. Mosaic is traditional but this tradition belongs not only to Ukrainian but world culture. The theme of redemption, Good and Evil being also traditional is a global one. Generally it is doubtful whether there exists a topic artists have not turned to yet, so contemporary art task is to find, to create new means of expression, new language that would enhance their recognition by contemporaries. Concerning material of my choice – wooden ornamented eggs – they also do not belong to mere Ukrainian tradition. Ukrainian culture is based on ancient traditions rooting from the same sources that feed the roots of the earliest cultures, of Maya, Persians, India, Egypt… It seems that some time people lived following the same laws, guided by same rules. After the Tower of Babel collapse that is after settling apart, dispersion and disintegration of a mankind people have preserved the memory of this common culture. And superficial divergences in peoples’ cultures are explained by different conditions under which their isolated developments run. Europe geographical center is located in Transcarpathian, Ukraine is a crossroad on a way of the great migration of peoples. So it is not surprisingly that their traditions and cultures got rooted and were preserved here, including tradition of having eggs as an object of veneration, taking them as symbols of fertility and immortality, global symbol of the creation of the world, eternal cycle of death and rebirth. The image of the cosmic egg out of which the world appears is present in the cosmogony myths of the Greeks, Polynesians, Japanese, Inka, Chinese, Phoenicians, Finns and Slavs. In Egypt the hieroglyph designating the egg is a determinative symbol meaning “potential opportunity”. Eggs are often depicted by artists.

That is why it would be a mistake to regard eggs as typical to only Ukrainian tradition. The matter is that Ukraine is one of a few countries where ancient codes of ornaments have been preserved and are still used. In the course of thousands years people invented new images, and have forgotten their old roots, beliefs and knowledge but in the furthermost corners of human memory reminiscences of the old codes are still present and they are easily recognizable. An egg gives rise to four basic elements (earth, water, air and flame) completing them with a fifth – world ether. The colors traditionally representing these elements in the cultures of all the peoples are the same, and this is one more uniting key.

Religion has separated mankind, tore people away from their age-old roots, so in searching for their origin people turn to Buddhism, practice yoga, mantras, in other words to detheistic traditions that allow them to reunite with the Universe. Painting the ornaments on the round egg is a kind of mantra as well for one cannot see the complete picture, it takes concentration and deep immersion to perform, otherwise you won’t get a perfect picture-symbol. An egg is a bundle of energy as a new life arises from it though discussions about the primacy are still on. In India all the birds laying eggs are named “born twice” as hatching out of the egg means second birth. Ornaments on the eggs are energy portals and we have to decipher them.

Sure I feel responsibility for revival of ancient roots that feed genuine Ukrainian culture, for the rebirth and reconstruction of age-old codes. I would like to see my work as an element that incorporates in a contemporary culture puzzle bringing spirituality back. Ukraine is the cradle of numerous significant accomplishments and innovations in all cultural domains, it has produced eminent greats who have enriched mankind such as Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov and Anton Chekhov, Sergei Prokofiev and Peter Tchaikovsky, pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the congenial violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Kazimir Malevich and Kandinskiy, Korolyov and Amosov. In the old times Ukraine, then Kiev Rus, had close economical and cultural bonds with Europe. Prince Yaroslav the Wise and Ingegrda Swedish daughter Anna became the wife of Henri I, king of France and mother of another French king – Philip I. Then for the long centuries Ukraine turned to the shield of Europe protecting it from Mongolian invasion that explains its isolation. Now Ukraine is an independent state seeking to revive its ties with Europe. Culture is an inseparable element of this process.

My project presented at the Venice Biennale is a visiting card of Ukrainian nation soul and spirit.

JC: Venice is a city of high caliber when it comes to art. As an artist yourself, do you feel that there is greater sense of responsibility when it comes to producing your work for the Biennale?

OM: Certainly it is, and being not only professional artist but a bachelor of philosophy as well, I’m very interested in trends in art, persons affecting its progress, as well as tendencies in contemporary art as a whole, including music, cinema, and architecture. An artist, creative personality, who takes part in major artistic events, whose artworks are presented to large number of people, is responsible for the directions of art’s development and influences the process.

I’ve studied modern tendencies in art, and my impression is that the notion of beauty has disappeared from contemporary art; it just states the chaos and disruption, randomness and aimlessness. The beauty is transformed, modified, twisted, distorted and is absent as such. While true beauty makes our brain to pause for a moment and then it restarts from the new level. True beauty is easily recognizable for meeting it once you remember it and realize that it has changed you, possibly, not much, but you have really turned better. Lots of people visit Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and it is very interesting to watch the spectators. There are whole lots of people, from various countries, of various religions, beliefs, occupations while the expression on their faces is the same. I long for creating just this sort of art. Have I succeeded it is for Ukrainian Pavilion visitors to judge.

JC: Was it your intention to reflect the inmates’ lives into the installation? By requesting their artistic hand, are you hoping that each egg will represent the dramatic destiny of mankind whilst contributing to the monumental installation as a whole?

OM: My first idea had been to ask people to depict their wishes and I was greatly disappointed by results. The wishes are very similar and primitive – home, car, husband/wife, and meals. But the main issue was that nothing happened to people’s thinking. They were just painting their goals. They were doing this just like all the other routine things they are doing every day to reach the goal, like getting up in the morning, cleaning the teeth, getting to the workplace. While another task - to depict own sin, evil, demon, fear, shortcomings – made people think. Searching own soul to find own demon that has to be driven away or the vice that has to be transformed person becomes better and the whole world turns better. Eggs have been painted (and are still painted) by rehabilitation centers patients, inmates of men’s and women’s penitentiaries, pupils of art schools, government ministers, the range is really vast. But when I receive ornamented eggs I am never able to comprehend whose picture it was – of a deputy or a prisoner. This is one more interesting aspect of the project underscoring that eventually there is no deep difference between people despite the differences in conditions of life, level of education, wellbeing. And the sins of a mankind are the same although the variety is much wider than the diversity of wishes. It seems that we are all prisoners, someone in a real colony with stone walls and barbed wire, someone in a handmade prison made of fears, prejudices, restrictions, in an egg shell that has to be broken to be free. Samsara in Buddhism is imaged as an egg, and egg’s shell break symbolizes Nirvana, way out of the endless cycle of rebirth limits. In fact lots of people said that they sensed a feeling of liberation and purification having comprehended own sins. They were interested in getting more information, after ornamenting one egg they wanted to continue as soul liberation is like an avalanche and it intensifies geometrically. There were even people who were unable to paint a picture but it doesn’t matter, for they started to think and their transformation began.

An immense work behind the project, the work of deliberate soul transformation is going on. This process concerns me as well, for when I had seen the pictures on certain eggs I realized that depicted sin is inherent to me as well and started to work over it. It doesn’t matter for which of the fragments the egg is meant, the main issue is the picture on it, the confession. Though it is considered that confession must be performed in secrecy, St. Joann of Kronstadt forced people to confess aloud, to shout out their sins in the church, and such public confession brought relief and enlightenment because people got rid of their sins and understood that their sins are innate to everybody. The problem of human beings is not that they are virtuous or sinful by nature; the problem is that their nature is human. Demons and angels are present in every person. Getting the right balance helps a lot. Possibly mankind has to realize this to change. So one of the tasks of my project is to let mankind cry out all the problems, get rid of demons and idols substituting the angels and I hope this will help people to become better. We’ve even created a devoted website (www.ghent-altarpiece.com), any person whenever he/she is can visit it to leave own picture there and we’ll copy this picture on an egg.

JC: The iconographic reference is the work of the Van Eyck brothers. Would you describe your work as homage to the proto-Renaissance?

OM: Van Eyck’s creation is the first masterpiece of the Renaissance. Famous Italian masters came later. Really in the history of art “Ghent altarpiece” (or “Adoration of the Lamb”) is unique, being an amazing phenomenon of artistic genius, combining absolute design completeness with an opportunity to develop further the ideas offered. Occurrence of this masterpiece is not a casual event. As after the “dark times” as well after any crises we start to think about own self, of what is it made of, when taken out of the cocoon of material success symbols, are there anything behind our souls beside the idols we’ve created instead of a proper values. A crisis is a shock that forces people to think. That is why every crisis is followed by spiritual renewal, renovation. I believe that now we are at the new Renaissance threshold. The door there is opened. Van Eyck laid down the foundations of creation of times to come that are valid in our times as well. “Adoration of the Lamb” depicts New Jerusalem or the heaven on earth, redeeming sacrifice is done, the blood turned to water of eternal life and the humanity is forgiven. The font depicted in the foreground symbolizes revival to a new, better life. The Heaven – common dream of a mankind – is achievable only through heaven and peace in our souls.

I offer my project “Post-vs-Proto-Renaissance” – let everyone splash out own sins, ornament the wooden egg, turning better and making heaven on earth closer.

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Canada: Exhume to Consume

Artist: Steven Shearer

Curator: Josee Drouin-Brisebois

Venue: Giardini

Vancouver-based Steven Shearer has been celebrated only in the last few years for his works in a variety of mediums such as: painting, sculpture, poetry and photography. Drawing formal and thematic parallels between art history and iconography associated with various subcultures such as Heavy Metal, Shearer has undoubtedly set Canada back in the forefront of international contemporary art.

His installation, Poem for Venice, is a towering 9-meter billboard of heavy metal-inspired shock talk; the work projects skyward like an outdoor movie screen. With phrases such as, “drunk on vomit of heaven” and “shivering whore of light”, set in raised white capital letters; it is impossible for anyone not to notice his bold, poetic billboard.

Inside the pavilion, we are greeted by numerous expressive figurative paintings, suggesting an alternative side of the dissent and social alienation and exposing the vulnerability of the human subject.

Jemma Craig

1 year ago 4 notes

Title: Sweden: Windows, Trees and Inbetween

Artist: Andreas Eriksson

Curator: Magnus af Petersens

Venue: Giardini

Several of the paintings Andreas Eriksson has produced for the Nordic Pavilion are based on the Renaissance notion of the canvas as a window. The paintings suggest nature seen through a window, with distortions and reflected light from an abstracted landscape.

The shadow paintings were made after photos of shadows cast by headlights of passing cars on an indoor wall of his house. Andreas Eriksson has depicted the shadows on a panel using paint without binding agent before letting a car painter spray-paint them. The pigment without binding agent is dissolved and comes through to the surface of the top paint layer while it is still wet. The interplay between outside and inside in these paintings, where the panel represents the window between them, is also a reference to the architecture of the Nordic Pavilion.

The bronze sculptures are casts of birds that have died crashing into the artist’s studio window, deceived by the reflections in the glass panes. Like painters, they interpreted the flat surface as an opening into a three-dimensional space. Andreas Eriksson has also made casts of molehills from his garden. The white plinths replicate the floorplan of his house, studio and the shed in the garden. In this way, the works in the Nordic Pavilion refer both to the place where they were created and the place where they are exhibited.

1 year ago 2 notes

Title: Australia: The Golden Thread

Artist: Hany Armanious

Curator: Anne Ellegood

Venue: Giardini

There are a few moments of quietness in the Giardini, but the Australian Pavilion is one. The Egyptian-born, Sydney-based artist Hany Armanious casts found items, usually discarded things that display the wear and tear of their past lives. Armanious achieves a homey elegance that is rare for this portion of the Biennale. Rooted in the process of casting and idiosyncratic in nature, the work stages a double take on objects ranging from ancient history to the everyday.

Jemma Craig

Jemma Craig: This years Biennale is entitled ILLUMInations. The curators choose this as it suggests art’s ability to illuminate experience and sharpen perception, as well as referencing the Age of Enlightenment. Did any of the new works you’ve created for this show consciously respond to this theme in any way?

Hany Armonious: I was only made aware of the theme towards the end of the production of my pieces, so I wasn’t consciously engaging in this dialogue, but I can see how the work could be read in this context.

JC: The process of casting is typically used to create duplicates of an object. But your work often uses casting to create one-off, unique sculptures of mass-produced objects, such as Crocs. What draws you to recreate these things?

HA: Casting allows me to have and to hold whatever thing I want. It’s very liberating to be able to claim an object by virtue of its truthful reproduction. I think of it as possession without ownership. This broadens my range of sculptural possibilities and provides access to places that I may not normally venture into. So a mass produced object can carry as much beauty as a unique object when regarded as a pattern for moulding. In this regard, the process of casting has an equalising effect where any object that is put through this system becomes precious.

JC: Your casting process is quite labour-intensive. How significant is it to you that your art is hard-wrought and invested with the artist’s personal touch?

HA: The act of making is part of the work in that it is intrinsic to the very presence of the final piece. There is an intimacy with the object during the production process that becomes evident when it is finally displayed, and this for me is of particular significance, not just because it is hand made, but because it’s suddenly imbued with a new quality that was not part of the original.

JC: Even though casting is a painstaking and highly controlled process, there is also a lot of chance element in your work, isn’t there? How significant it this to the final outcome?

HA: There are two approaches at work here; a fleeting aesthetic sensation borne from an encounter with a few simple objects, and then there is the deliberate rendering of this encounter in a permanent and fixed material. There is a lot of play and looking before I start casting, sometimes months of observing a few random elements that found their way into my studio. Then there is the, sometimes-near impossible, task of trying to recreate these moments in resin or metal. The marriage of these two approaches is what excites me and gives the work a charge.

JC: I’m intrigued by the frequent use of decorative ornament, particularly Middle-Eastern style patterning in your work. What draws you to these patterns? Is it their inherent lyricism or more their cultural significance?

HA: I used middle eastern references in only one project in 2005 which was intended as an exercise in the conflation of east and west, but generally I prefer to work outside of any ethnic agenda, so I guess I’m more drawn to the inherent lyricism in any number of cultural objects.

JC: Classical mythology has inspired the titles of some of your recent shows – The Birth of Venus in New York, for instance. Your Venice pavilion is called The Golden Thread - is this a reference to classical mythology, and can you expand upon the significance of this title?

HA: This was a title of an existing work that was not included in the show. It’s a term used as part of the Alexander Technique where you imagine a golden thread coming up your back and out of the top of your head as a way to correct posture. I liked this term because it spoke to some of the practicalities of keeping a sculpture upright, the problems of the support and verticality. At the same time it seemed to allude to a type of magical narrative or fable, which helps to move the work away from the purely analytical and situates it in a warmer light.

1 year ago 1 note

Title: Switzerland: Crystal of Resistance

Artist: Thomas Hirschhorn

Venue: Giardini

The boldest artistic statement in the Giardini undoubtedly comes from Hirschhorn. The intense, political installation is an accumulation of tinfoil, brown tape and cardboard. The photographs taken from the recent revolutions in the Middle East juxtaposed with the gossip magazines create a harrowing, yet inspiring effect. It represents the power of the media, and the technological world that surrounds us.

Jemma Craig

1 year ago 2 notes

Title: Thailand: Paradiso di Navin

Artist: Navin Rawanchaikul

Curator: Pandit Chanrochanakit and Steven Pettifor

Venue: Giardini

Aware of the theme of ILLUMInations and Thailand’s ongoing factitious political landscape, Navinland is a multifaceted situational environment that challenges the eprceptions of identity and nationhood, through a trajectory of a borderless community. An extension of the Navin Party, a previously established network to connect Navins of the world, Navinland acknowledges the historical framework of kingdoms, republics, unions, micronations, and transnations, while extricating itself from geographic, theological or ideological containment.

At Paradiso di Navin, the public is asked to consider and register support for the fledgling non-nation of Navinland. At the transit area for the burgeoning collective of Navins and friends of Navin, Chairman Navin satirically subverts utopian idealism in extant art agendas.

Typically approached from a site-specific geo-cultural viewpoint, Navin Rawanchaikul is renowned for dynamic art works that involve direct interventions, social commentary, and an innovative style of integrating community or individual experiences into eccentric fictional tales. Incorporating everyday culture relevant and current to the chosen environment, Navin explores the negotiation between local circumstances and trends of globalisation. His oeuvre encompasses a broad array of media including installation, film, performance, mobile galleries, billboards, comics, games, merchandise and cocktails.

1 year ago

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