A Virtual Biennale

Title: Venezuela: Spaces

Artist: Francisco Bassim, Clemencia Labin, Yoshi

Curator: Luis Hurtado

Venue: Giardini

The project Espacios, Spaces, Spazi makes way for a broader model in which a group of artists from different generations and disciplines take part in order to present a national representation that outwardly defies the formal tenets of what is understood as art and in order to set up a relationship between the spectator and the artwork as an involving space. Based on the biennale’s main concept, the project formulates complex relationships between three artists who each develop a vision of space as the core of representation, encompassing the problem of relationships between styles of art, of decoration and of social relations.

The works by Francisco Bassim, Yoshi and Clemencia Labin, whose mediums range from painting and hand-folded paper to collective urban art, create and reveal interesting tensions that exist between the artist (artwork) and the spectator. Bassim creates a place-cum-chapel with richly embellished backgrounds where instead of saints he presents figures from history, film and contemporary culture. Yoshi transforms the exhibition space into a place for contemplation in which he ostensibly follows the guidelines set down by abstraction and constructivism However, when the spectator gets closer he or she perceives an infinitely charged work, which draws influence from the ancient tradition of paper folding to create another type of Baroque vision. The room is a sort of border between decorative and craft arts. Clemencia Labin invites us to relive the Velada Santa Lucia, a collective artistic experience involving the appropriation of and interaction between public and private space, which takes place each year in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, and in which some 200 artists work together with locals inside their homes. The video narrates an urban, popular and social process in which the public play the leading role in the creative process.

This representation underlines the desire for a world where art and culture are essential elements of human and social developments and in bringing nations together – something that the Venezuelan pavilion are trying so desperately hard to achieve.

1 year ago 2 notes

Hungary: Crash - Passive Interview

Artist: Hajnal Németh

Curator: Miklós Peternák

Venue: Giardini

Emily Burke in conversation with Hajnal Németh

Emily Burke: Have you felt any pressure representing Hungary at the most important international contemporary art festival in the world?

Hajnal Nemeth: No, on the contrary, I have found this opportunity an exciting challenge and I haven’t felt the pressure of national representation, especially not during work. As for the communication segment of representation, that wasn’t really my job – at least that’s what I think. I was only interested in creative work.

EB: As the largest Biennale, and one of the world’s most important platforms for the dissemination of contemporary international artwork, do you think that the Biennale participants have a social obligation to represent their various countries in a certain way?

HJ: I don’t think that in case of the Biennale or any other occasion, the artists would have social obligations, just as art cannot have social obligations when we’re speaking of nations and representation.

Dedication is also a kind of obligation, but it operates according to a special system of values and measures. I think art is free, and probably most artists like to socialize.

EB: Did you feel you had to monitor or change your approach to devising your own work in order to reflect this?

HJ: No, never.

EB: Are there particular aspects of the Hungarian culture that you feel need to be expressed through art? Or do you disregard these?

HJ: I don’t think that anything “needs” to be expressed in art, only “can” be expressed. Even if someone is inspired by the culture of their immediate environment, and perhaps they express this in their work, that doesn’t mean they can’t pursue a general, overall, universal meaning.

Speaking specifically of Hungary, I, for one, don’t take it as a point of departure – regarding my work – as I’ve been living in Berlin for 10 years now. Of course this doesn’t mean that my works express German culture. This is not a question of nationality.

EB: Do you think that artists in general have a certain social responsibility to represent their country, or in the modern culture that we live in do individual art practices take precedent over ties to our culture?

HJ: Social responsibility is a friendlier expression than social obligation, but I still don’t think this is country related. I think most “modern people” feel at home in, or by, similar people, especially with regard to the spirit. The spirit of a country can’t be identical to the spirit of an individual, as the former is an abstract notion of political (cultural political) and economic positions, and the other inherently stands for free will.

In this sense, art obviously belongs to the spirit of the individual, but individual art practice is still not capable of carrying through modern projects without assistance. In most cases, voluminous and complex installations such as mine require teamwork.

EB: How do you expect your audience at the Venice Biennale, being such a wide and diverse range of people from all areas of the world, to react to your work here?

HJ: I expect them to react in a wide and diverse way. (But I hope they all like it.)

EB: How important is audience participation in your work, and are you influenced depending on where your work is exhibited?

HJ: Without an audience these works don’t even exist in some sense, since they are (re)born through the audience, so their presence is very important. The sounds, colours, narratives, etc. adapt not to the expected audience, but rather to such physical characteristics as the space, the lighting, the duration of the exhibition; these factors have stronger influence on the presentation of the work.

EB: In an age that is so dominated by that of the socially networked Internet, how influential are the genres and forms of popular culture in your art practice?

HJ: To me, the Internet is just a communicational base, it doesn’t inspire me. It is too narrow. It can’t replace real experience.

EB: Could you give us an insight into your work here at the Hungarian Pavilion? What are your aims here in Venice whilst representing Hungary at the Biennale?

HJ: The installation is practically made up of a found object – as it happens, a totalled car wreck –, opera dialogues recorded in video and audio formats, plus their librettos. Another important element is the strong red light flooding the wreck – basically natural light from outside, coming through coloured windows.

Despite all appearances, this work is first of all not about the car crash: rather, it poses questions about chance and its validity, about the possibility of determination, via the example of the car crash. In fact, it literally poses questions, as the librettos sung and also printed for reading are built on yes-no questions. Most of the librettos contain detailed stories of car crashes, based on stories related by the survivors. In this respect, the work considers the temporality of memory prevalent instead of real time.

EB: Do you have any relation to the car-crash victims in your videos that you will be exhibiting in your work?

HJ: The videos feature opera singers performing the dialogues.

The – almost – victims of the car crashes, the sources of the stories, are my friends and acquaintances, with most of whom I have an informal personal relationship. However, their representation is completely impersonal – they are displayed at the exhibition in a black and white photo series, with their backs to the camera.

EB: In your work the viewer experiences music transcending its own role as music, becoming visualized as an integrated part of the expression. Do you feel that music as an art form is stronger than visual art? Do you think that music is more appealing to the general viewer than certain forms of visual art?

HJ: I don’t think that any art form would be stronger or weaker than the other, and so their comparison doesn’t make sense to me. I think these forms of expression can be characterized, or assessed, in terms of similar features. A still or moving image has rhythm just as a sound can have colour or a sequence of notes can have form. Visual and audio pieces can be similarly abstract or difficult to interpret, or easy to apperceive and thus popular. Additionally, I think that these forms of expression don’t exist without one another, and I especially like the play and tension in the way they complement one another.

As regards the viewer, it can never be general, and I think that art intends to communicate rather than appeal.

EB: Crash, the work that you will be showing at the Venice Biennale, from what I understand is the manifestation of a frozen moment when the car was deformed into a wreck. When approaching this piece, do you aim to shock the viewer by the car’s displacement in a new ‘reality’?

HJ: To shock? This is not my aim. The possibility of death is manifested in the work, but it is present in all of our lives. What does indeed shock us is the fact of our own death, which we spend our lives trying to prevent.

EB: Do you see the car crash as a form of political statement?

HJ: Perhaps. The possibility of crash is inherent in everything. Perhaps this is “destiny”.

EB: Surely the content of this piece has changed due to the different setting at the Hungarian pavilion? Did you change the piece in any way because of this new setting? Do you think this will be detrimental to the message of the piece?

HJ: Crash was exhibited previously, at the Municipal Picture Gallery of Budapest, at the Kunsthalle Budapest and in Modem also. At the Hungarian pavilion I added a new element, a video featuring opera dialogues about car crashes recorded on the “stage of life”. So there is the wreck in red light, the sound, the librettos on music stands and the video. In fact, this is the most ideal setting for this installation so far. Not only has it not deteriorated, but it has reached completeness - both in terms of form and content (or message).

EB: What relation do the three spaces of your exhibition have to each other? And what is the significance of colour in your work, specifically black, white and red?

HJ: Perhaps the best description would be that the components presented in different spaces are linked as a chain. During the design stage, I thought that it could be approached from anywhere, that we could start the tour in any room as the components are of equal significance, without any hierarchy. However, even if there is no hierarchy, a narrative does exist, and later I realized that the most ideal strategy is to first catch sight of the car wreck bathing in red light – here we can already hear the singing of the dialogues – and crossing the passage we can skim the stories on the music stands – silent witnesses – and finally in the video room we get an insight into the recordings of the opera performances.

Colours are always significant, but their task is very easy: red is intended to highlight; black and white represent minimum and maximum contrast.

1 year ago 2 notes

Title: Uruguay: A Common Ground

Artist: Alejandro Cesarco, Magela Ferrero

Curator: Clio E. Bugel

Venue: Giardini

According to Clio E. Bugel, the curator for A Common Ground by Alejandro Cesarco and Magela Ferrero, there are three inextricably related working hypotheses on which this exhibition for the Uruguay Pavilion is based. The first is the fact that affectivity remains a central axis in contemporary local artistic production. The exhibition puts forth two antithetical notions of this idea: one extreme is the personal diary, a written and visual work in progress by Magela Ferrero; and another, the discourses and metadiscourses about language, that somehow substitute the declarations and longings for love in Alejandro Cesarco’s constant need to shed light on what is said. The second hypothesis is that the common ground is expressed through the way in which the artists choose to retell issues from their own personal history. The third and final hypothesis is that the common ground ends up being, above all else, an affective space that many of us avoid for the sake of prudence, prejudice, or vanity, provoking a flight or infinite race forward, wherever that may be.

The need to call upon a shared territory is key to this work, with Venice as the gathering place for these two Uruguayan artists. However though these hypotheses may be inextricably linked to the work, it is particularly hard for the viewer to comprehend it, and one is instead left feeling slightly deflated and confused.

Emily Burke

1 year ago 5 notes

Title: United Kingdom: I, Impostor

Artist: Mike Nelson

Curator: Richard Riley

Venue: Giardini

An Unexpected Impostor

As the largest of its kind, the Venice Biennale presents one of the world’s most important platforms for the dissemination of contemporary, international artwork. It would therefore be expected that each artist, either individually at the IllumiNATIONS exhibition or whilst representing their country at a pavilion, would aim to bring something new to the artistic palette. This year’s exhibition at the British Pavilion, I, Impostor by Mike Nelson, offers something far greater than that. Though the work that Nelson is exhibiting seems to have no obvious link to Great Britain, with the dark, dusty rooms and ever-continuing passageways evoking a traditional Istanbul house instead of the British tearoom-like building the pavilion once was, his work offers two things: Firstly, the chance for three very distinct cultures, Great Britain, Venice and Istanbul, to mix and intertwine through contemporary art, demonstrating the multiculturalism of our modern British society. Secondly, the opportunity for both artist and audience to see that in the contemporaneous climate, national identity and the ‘traditional’ Biennale idea of representing ones country is not straightforward or specific anymore.

Through his particular art practice, Nelson constructs site-specific, large-scale installations that represent a period of living and working in a particular location. His immersive works are intriguing and atmospheric, submerging the viewer into an unfolding narrative that develops through a sequence of meticulously placed articles and spatial structures. Throughout his career, Nelson has constantly returned and re-examined territories that he has already visited and experienced within his own art practice. Here, we can see this again, with the piece for the British Pavilion revisiting the work he created for the 8^th International Istanbul Biennale in 2003, entitled Magazin: Büyük Valide Han. More often than not, the specific worlds that Nelson creates are deeply personal. He states that “in relation to the work in Venice, both cities have played a pivotal role in my life. Istanbul especially has acted as a meter silently occupying a part of my psyche since 1987. Each time I return it has changed, as have I, and yet there is a history, a felt history. In coming to make a work for Venice what I wanted to attempt to do was to make sense of the last 10 years that had elapsed since my last time there in 2001. Somehow I wanted to talk about how I perceive the shift in the world since then but to articulate these histories in such a way that they touch upon my own.”

Mike Nelson’s art has often been described as being only implicit in its cultural, social or political standpoints, with a certain amount of attention and imagination being required on the viewer’s part. Nelson’s work is also unrestricted by the stereotypical British point of view one may expect; instead it roams over many cultural territories and combines them to create a far more substantial art practice. Despite being selected to represent his country, Nelson produces a work that seems only to speak of a detachment from it. However, this is clearly the aim of his work for the Venice exhibition.

The work begs the question: do artists exhibiting at the Venice Biennale have a social responsibility to represent their country as a nation? Or is this view defunct, leaving the artists with only a responsibility to themselves? If we cling to the former, what was once an opportunity for countries around the world to present themselves on an artistic level has now turned into a form of artistic Olympics, where those with the biggest financial backing and greatest egos strive for gold, or in the Biennale’s case, the Golden Lion.

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, the U.S. Pavilion’s chosen artists, are two of the main runners in this artistic battle, with their exhibition Gloria. 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.

Though the U.S. and the U.K. representatives hold completely contradictory standpoints on the idea of national representation, both pavilions emphasise the fact that it is no longer possible in the globalised age, to portray a nation as a unified body without falling into cliché. The U.S demonstrate this, the UK abstains – opting for the alternative.

It can be seen in Mike Nelson’s work that the weaving of fact and fiction are fundamental, and his constructs are steeped in both historic and literary references, whilst drawing upon the specific cultural context and geography of the location. Here in I, Impostor, Nelson has created a building within a building using cheap materials found in junkyards and skips in Venice and Istanbul. “I planned, and ultimately did, give the building two exteriors; one the neo- classical exterior of a bastardised tea house, an anglicised Italian building - the pavilion. Whilst the other was based on that of a courtyard in an Istanbul Han, a seventeenth century Caranavaserai remodelled and re-built in concrete, re-sited in the centre of the existing building by the removal of the roof. The Han in question was the site of my 2003 work for the Istanbul biennale: Magazin: Büyük Valide Han. 2011’s work references back to two previous works to make sense of two cities, their historical relationships to one another and their relevance to me and my own subjective history.”

Nelson continues: “My aims firstly were not nationalistic, they were like any other work to make the most interesting use of the context possible at that point in time, both on a conceptual or narrative level and on a structural or sculptural level. Of course to deny an interest in the building’s identity and history would be disingenuous, and perhaps the gesture of removing the roof, letting the air in (and whatever out) whilst replacing the building with another building within, with an eastern identity is all part of that.” The ever-present multicultural aspect of Nelson’s work is the defining idea that emphasises the apparent demise of a stereotypical, national identity at the Venice Biennale. Paradoxically however, through his work Nelson has captured a very contemporaneous stance. After all Britain is no longer a tearoom-like society, both in culture and in art. In turning away from a nationalistic agenda and ignoring well-worn clichés, Nelson has avoided replaying the past and perhaps come closer to representing modern Britain than we may initially think.

Emily Burke

1 year ago 2 notes

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.

Emily Burke

1 year ago 2 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: 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: Greece: Beyond Reform

Artist: Diohandi

Curator: Maria Marangou

Venue: Giardini

Participation from Conception to Realisation

Since Diohandi’s work began in 1968, space has been an integral part to her projects. Carried to her revised Greek Pavilion in the Giardini at the Biennale de Venezia, where she produces Beyond Reform, using the power of space to illustrate the contemporary Greek experience of economic recession. Extending past its physicality, Diohandi presents a distinct and moving experience of space for the viewer as one is immersed into a seemingly vast darkness, guided and motivated to proceed by a white beam of light at the end of the preordained path.

Beyond Reform represents the process of our ability to configure our mind, body and soul in order to identify the links between society and its representation in contemporary art. Emerging precisely at the junction where words falter and where language is disturbed, Diohandi’s work contrasts light, water and sound, formulating a narrative that comments on the Greek experience of the economic recession. Hurling the viewer into the antinomies of perception, Diohandi tackles the exploration of limits, the not-so-distant horizon and the unstable boundaries of the economy.

Ambiguously titled, the work looks to the future when Greece has recovered from the recession. In this sense, the work stands as motivation and inspiration that Greece will venture from the economic turmoil. Providing an insight to the future, the light source appeals to the viewer’s sensibility as it metaphorically represents hope. Reflective of its exterior, the interior space is focused and made up of minimal aesthetics. A minimal approach on both the exterior and interior creates a space ripe for contemplation. On approach, the viewer is greeted by Diohandi’s revised plain pine façade, a striking contrast to the Byzantine charm of the original Greek Pavilion.

Beyond Reform not only provides optimism for the Greeks, but also marks a social change that looks to the future as opposed to being stuck in the past. Diohandi directly embraces the ideas of optimism, hope and positivity, however the pavilion comes across as slightly poetic – and dare I say it, clichéd. But clichés address the point in a clear and concise manner. By presenting the issue for what it is and not dressing it up, Diohandi successfully produces her work in a way that still requires an extent of contemplation, but in this, prevents it from turning into an incomprehensible and overly-complex piece.

Beyond Reform explicitly links the reforms that had to be initiated in Greece surrounding the economic crisis. A number of riots broke out in response to the reforms that had to be initiated to deal with the recession. By siding away from the portraying the actual occurrences, Diohandi’s response deals with the mental state that one needs to be in to overcome the difficulties. Her economical piece is more powerful in its execution as it provides answers and an insight to the future, as opposed to just documenting the action. Her response involves her metaphorically recreating the crisis in an aesthetic manner. Diohandi’s selection of the theme for her representation of Greece in the Biennale de Venezia hints at the responsibility she feels to document the economic circumstances. The reliance on participation from the viewer, which then follows to conception before finally resulting in realisation is crucial. Yet, as no work is free from association, it is easy for the viewer to determine this. By inviting the viewer to participate in the ritual of re-constructing the Greek Pavilion, where water; light and wood become the components of a new, yet finite memory, the viewer feels need to reflect only for the five minutes it takes to pass through the pavilion. The finite nature of the pavilion stems from its revised facades, which will be removed in November in closure of the Biennale de Venezia.

It may be simple in its execution, yet the meaning is far from it. Diohandi clearly distances herself from any tautological definitions of the language of art in relation to the economy. The work sides away from being overtly political. Instead, it appeals to the mental attitude that we must adapt if we ever wish to return to economic stability. Fully aware of the power of space on an individual’s senses, Diohandi approaches it as an environment that acts upon our perceptions of the world. Obsessively haunting the semantic gaps of ambiguity, Diohandi’s particular standpoint comments on the responsibility of the artist. Diohandi exploits the insight fostered by an encounter with art and its ability to sharpen the tools of perception. By encouraging the act of contemplation, it illustrates the need for interaction to shape the world’s awareness.

Jemma Craig

Jemma: I view the Biennale as a global exhibition that not only presents contemporary art, but also establishes the issues that are relevant to that particular country. Beyond Reform is a metaphorical representation of the current situation in Greece. Dominating worldwide news, were you certain that you were to base your installation on the current economical situation in Greece?

Diohandi: My work ŒBeyond Reform‚ is definitely a metaphorical representation. As social and economical difficulties exist not only in Greece nowadays but globally as well, the project has been realized in a such a way that reflects cohesively the parameters that define the current situation in Europe and the rest of the world. More so, it offers the hope of possible ways out of this crisis.

Jemma: Do you think that being an artist, you have an advantage to spread awareness and capture people‚s minds? Do you feel a responsibility to do so?

Diohandi: Being an artist you do have this advantage and try to make people aware as much as you can, in a way that you become the receiver of social sensitivities.

Jemma: Would you say that your work not only applies to Greece ˆ but countries worldwide? Do you believe that the underlying commentary on how we should think towards our future is something that unites us all?

Diohandi: Yes, by all means. All nations should be unified to confront all obstacles and issues with a spirit of communication and mutual understanding.

Jemma: By looking to the future, as opposed to being fixed in the present or past, Beyond Reform provides encouragement and optimism that things will get better. By providing alternative solutions, it could be deemed that the pavilion is also a metaphorical representation of the thinking pattern that one needs to adopt when considering the future of our countries. Do you agree?

Diohandi: Totally. This is exactly the predominant meaning of ŒBeyond Reform‚.

Jemma: Your work is often created around the impact of the forms. Devoid of distraction, the Byzantine charm has been stripped from the building, was this first step to secure the greatest impact? Do you think the serene and contemplative environment enhances the effectiveness of the message?

Diohandi: I always study and place emphasis on a given space in a given time. In the case of the Greek Pavilion, it is this idea that led me to totally cover the Byzantine façade and not only the form per se. I work on both the exterior and interior of the building as to eventually become one. The façade changes, the dimensions alter, thus creating a voyage through successive inter-changes of used materials: water, sound and light.

Jemma: Contrasted to the reality in Greece, the installation is incredibly calm. Do you think that art needs to be garish and loud? In your opinion, do you think that contemporary art now favours reflection and contemplation as opposed to being fixated with the aesthetics of beauty?

Diohandi: The installation partially represents the reality of Greece today. Light is a key element of the interior that may be interpreted in different ways, and leads to truth and exaltation. To reach the light, in the sense of hope, one needs serenity and self examining.

Jemma: What would be your reply to someone who labelled your execution, ‘clichéd’?

Diohandi: Truth couldn‚t possibly be a cliché. One‚s aim is to depict and reproduce truth in space and time.

1 year ago 3 notes

A Virtual Biennale

About:

Search:

Following: