Lights Tension Strings

Urging from this ludic summer hiatus, I am returning to write about the Biennale. One thing I did during my time off was take a trip out to the suburbs with my colleague Mary, who was also in Paris, to see the Mac/Val contemporary art museum. Mary and I met at the Francois Mitterrand metro station and once we figured out how to take the RER, we were off to this commune south of the city-Vitry-sur-Seine.

At the museum we met up with curator and friend of Mary's, Valerie; who gave us a very enjoyable personal tour of the current exhibitions as well as the rest of the museum.

I'm really glad Mary took me here and introduced me to Valerie, I would have never wandered so far out of the city and didn't know this place existed to be honest. Thanks to Valerie for the free catalogs.

Back to the Biennale ( I still have a few posts in me).... Highlighted above is the work of South Korean artist Haegue Yang. I came across Yang's work last year at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, and glad I was to see where her work had gone in just a few years. Her work was one of my favorite individual pieces in the keynote exhibition- a series of jacked up venitian blinds ( I lied again about there being no venitian blinds in Venice) with colored light bulbs intertwined with cables and strings, intersecting the blinds themselves- which are hanging on what appear to be clothing racks.

A host of other objects dangling from these structures created these somewhat intimate and formal compositions.

The Korean Pavilion (below) hosted her work as well. This piece resemble the pieces at the Carnegie International.

Just outside of the Arsenal towards the gardens was another of my personal favorites: Pae White. This old space was reconstructed by the addition of a drop ceiling/tapestry made of intertwined colorful strings. This caused the chandeliers (created out of raw materials and bird seed) to be displayed a lot lower and closer than they would normally be.

This created a sense of intimacy to the space that at the same time seemed to resemble a giant bird cage. Once in a while, the "gallery attendants" would go into wild bird calls, chirping away towards the heights of the space. A pretty surreal experience.

The tapestry below was unbelievable. Rays of colorful string woven into this spider-like den.

This materiality theme kept on coming. Below is yet another favorite: Moshekwa Langa's installation containing unraveling spools of colorful string creating a huge cartographic map on the floor. The model cars placed throughout was the first clue that the 3-dimensional installation was meant to be perceived as a 2-dimensional map or perhaps a model diorama.

Each of the colorful strings symbolizing roads, rivers and other dividing lines we would originally see on a map. The spools of strings could have been transformed into buildings as they unravel and spill out onto the streets. I perceived this piece to thematize the idea of travel, yet something about it seemed to say more. Maybe it was that all the model trees in the diorama were uprooted. Perhaps the other random objects placed throughout tried to guide me in another direction. Yet another paradoxical statement addressing automobiles, perhaps the industry itself?

At this point I knew I was over-thinking it, so I just continued to enjoy the piece visually and formally. This was a beautiful piece. The title of the piece was "Temporal Distance (With Criminal Intent). You Will Find Us in the Best Places." Above is a worms eye view and here below is a shot with the camera raised a little to capture the scale of the space.

One last installation along the same material theme was the work of Yona Friedman (below). It was one of the first rooms of the Arsenal; like some of the previous ones the installation also created a sort of drop ceiling in the room, which trapped a slew of cardboard structures.

The installation went up some 20 feet in the air and seemed to resemble a city, with catwalks connecting some structures to others. Falling structures, crooked buildings...Venice?

Some close-up shots looking straight up at the installation.

Grandiose Biennale, Not So Much...

There were over 100 sites outside of the Giardini and Arsenal that exhibited works connected to the biennale. If you took a walk between the two main sites you might have encountered one of Hector Zamora's many blimps throughout the exhibition. This one above is stuck between the narrow streets of Venice. I assume there were many throughout, but I just stumbled upon one of them.  I did however see some of the work he had inside the Arsenal. Here (below) is a few of the blimps hanging from the ceiling. This half deflated blimp stuck between two old structures (above) seemed to resonate with the state of the economy and the not-so-grandiose turnout of this year's biennale. Apparently, the crash of the art market has left the Venice Biennale operating with 1.5 million dollars less than in 2007.

Hector Zamora is a Mexican artist who seems to be getting plenty of exposure as of recent, having exhibited in the Sao Paolo and Busan biennials in the past recent years. His work looks to create "social interventions that manifest themselves as architecture or sculpture, as a collective action or an installation in a public space".

Hector Zamora also created a corresponding video (above) inside the Arsenal of hundreds of computer generated blimps slowly moving over the city of Venice. 

Another piece that seemed to correspond with the budget cuts was in the Nordic pavilion.  I had mentioned in the previous post that Russia hosted the exhibition with the "most" artists for their pavilion, but I was mistaken. The Nordic pavilion hosted the work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Their project consisted of them inviting a group 24 more artists to transform their two large pavilions into mock homes/mansions. Below is the pool of a fictional art collector- with him in it. The dummy, made of silicone-so his skin looked very realistic, was placed as if having just committed suicide. Inside you got to walk about his mansion and look at his eccentric collection of art, everything appeared as if the accident outside had just happened- music left playing, etc..

A site specific piece that I enjoyed was "Keep Something for a Rainy Day" (below) by Att Poomtangon from Thailand. This colorful structure 'combined social sculpture with environmentally friendly technology' and was functioning as a water pump and purifier, providing clean water for the visitors of the biennale.

German artist Tamara Grcic's site specific installation outside in one of the canals that meets the Arsenal, looked as if a campsite. Each large inner-tube had a bright orange tent covering with a microphone hanging down from the rafters, right over each tent. The sound component did not correspond to the images below, at times you could hear sounds from an office: fax copy machines, people chatting, computer sounds, modems, etc.

This next piece by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping hung from the ceiling in this beautiful old room inside the Arsenal resembling a large octopus creature. In fact, it was a large re-creation of the Hand of Buddha - a type of tree used in Chinese medicine. These sculptures scale brought the viewer into a fantasy realm, where the ambiguity of the spiritual and creaturely beings came together.

The lights in the back are from another artist whom I will cover in a section about 'lights and strings' (my favorite individual works in the biennale) - but thats for later. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these large scale works in the biennale. I'm off to enjoy my last week in Paris.

'Ave a Go, Ya Mug!

One of the most surprisingly good pavilions this year was the Australian. I dont know why I say 'surprising' really, I guess it's because I almost missed it, since it was tucked away and wasn't anything impressive. It also had a car (above) parked outside and a motorcycle (below) halfway into the structure.

The work was that of Shaun Gladwell. He presented a group of videos, photos and sculptures influenced by the Australian outback and the Mad Max movies. His work  deals with a 'sort of journey or passage, an exploration of the sublime; action portrayed in slow motion, the human figure seen as a moving sculpture, and the strive for balance' both literally and metaphorically.

                       

In this series titled " MADDESTMAXIMVS", Gladwell presents a slow moving high definition video of the Mad Max-like character standing on top of a souped-up car, car surfing if you will, as it flies at high-speeds down a never-ending dirt road without a driver. The character then stretches his arms wide resembling Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man". (Very appropriate -since the actual da Vinci drawing is housed in Venice).  The character slowly climbs back into the car through the window. This piece seemed to be integrated into the biennale quite well- the paradox being that there are no streets in Venice. 

                       

If you remember, the apocalyptic character of the Mad Max movies, played by young Mel Gibson, was taking on revenge after the death of his family by a road gang. Mad Max goes on a raging chase to find and kill the responsible parties. In this video above- "Apology to Roadkill" by Gladwell, a character wearing his full on black motorcycle leather get-up, pulls his bike over and cradles a dead kangaroo desperately, on the side of an Australian highway. Both visually stunning and heartbreaking, he paces back and forth with this large kangaroo's limbs dangling from his arms. Doing a bit of research led me to something I was expecting- that Kangaroos are hit in Australian roadways at an increasing rate due to highway construction in major kangaroo habitats. The work was very simplistic, a mix of humor and turmoil, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.

A second pavilion worth mentioning as a good surprise was the Japanese pavilion- the artist was Miwa Yagani. The exhibition included 5 oversized picture frames containing these black and white photographs of  half naked giant characters set against devastated landscapes in the background. If you were to peek around behind these, you would have found smaller portraits of women on the wall (one which was sweeping sand from the floor.)

The lighting was not that good inside here, so the images came out a little blurry.

The exhibition also included a video housed in a black tent, low to the ground. In the video: five set of feet under a black tent, moving across the desert. To parallel the work inside, the Japanese pavilion itself was also covered under a giant black tent. When entering Yagani's monumental installation "Windswept Women: The Old Girls' Troupe",  your personal sense of scale turned to miniature ( 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' feeling). The fact that the artist played around with the concept of the word "pavilion", was the best thing for me in the exhibition. The fact that the word was originally intended to be that of a temporary structure, yet in the context of the biennale- these structures have been up for 50+ years. Addressing this concept, the video inside shows a tent running around a desert in constant motion. The viewer is required to crouch down as if to enter the tent; entering a child's paradigm- reinforcing the shift of scale and perspective.

Thanks for sending me your emails, I will send the Aleksandra Mir postcards today. I still have a few- so make sure to get yours.

No Venetian Blinds in Venice

                     

Just came back from a three-day intense run through of the 53rd Venice Biennale. The sun was shining, temperatures mildly and pleasantly hot. So what did I see? 

I checked out all of the international pavilions in the Giardini and the Arsenal, as many of the off sites as I could find in the Labyrinth, as well as Daniel Birnbaum's curated exhibition "Making Worlds", which extends to both major sites. I took hundreds of images and videos so it won't be easy to choose what to blog about- they will come in handy for slide lectures in class, thats for sure. Instead of just putting them up in a photo album, I have decided to post a series of entries in the next couple of days- selectively dividing into categories some of the highlights of the exhibition. This first post I will dedicate to two of my favorite country pavilions.

The best of them, in my opinion, was the German Pavilion with the work of Liam Gillick. The pavilion only exhibited one artist and had nothing in the show but a large kitchen-like wooden structure, with no appliances, extending from room to room. In the main room of the exhibition was a kitchen island, and on top of one of the shelves: a cat.

Not a real cat, but what appeared to be a taxidermied cat. It also had a crumpled up piece of paper in its mouth. The exhibition had a couple of other components to it- a written poem/story that you are handed as you enter the space, which had a story titled: "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO BEHAVE? A KITCHEN CAT SPEAKS" written by the artist as well. The story is about a cat who is worshiped by a whole town, as they wish to know the cat's stance on 'the history of totalitarian architecture or the restriction of credit within the context of failed models of globalization.' Ha...

That was part of a sound component too- a voice reading the story out loud:

"There will be a cat that can speak. All the people of the town will be very proud of their speaking cat.

People will come every day to hear what it has to say.

It will be very cynical but never mean.

It will see everything and understand all..."

The repeating design of the structure leads you throughout the pavilion's multiple rooms, bringing you back full circle into the room with the cat watching over you. The piece was pretty funny / I couldn't stop laughing. I came to realize later that it was a response to the history of the pavilion, it's totalitarian design and the fact that it was designed in 1938 pre-wwii, with no bathrooms or a place to rest. The piece could  also be a general response of the site of the Giardini itself and it's disparate pavilion designs. Also, during the off season the Giardini is apparently known for being overrun by stray cats!

Either way, I thought of my cats and how they never let me work. Dandelion used to always climb on top of the fridge having to be in control of the whole room. Dolly always sitting on a stack of papers as I'm trying to grade them. This was their piece, I thought- they will always be the ultimate totalitarian voice- the only ones who speak. Very minimal, very german (although the artist was British, which was interesting) yet definitely my favorite exhibition hall in the biennale.

Forget the economy, the Russians put up some dough for this one.  I thought Russia had one of the most ambitious and best exhibitions in the biennale- with 7 artists representing the country- the most of all. The theme of the exhibition dealt with utopian concepts of victory. Here below is Pavel Pepperstein's exhibition of mock utopian drawings accompanied by neon sculptures at the bottom. The walls were black and there was black lighting throughout the whole room highlighting the drawings, while speakers in the room were blaring Pepperstein rapping. 

Here are some close-ups of the mock utopian drawings

In a different room - Irina Korina's fountain sculpture (above). This was one of Anna's favorite- it was made with plastic table cloths Russian's usually have in their kitchens- she tells me.  

                             

Above is video of Gosha Ostretsov's installation in the bottom floors. Reminiscent of a haunted house, the exhibition was full of motion activated animatronics in what appeared to be a dilapidated barn/basement. Sorry for the poor quality of this one.

This is Alexey Kallima's four wall projection of screaming soccer fans. The screams get louder and louder, then the lights in the room go on and everything is silent.

Anatoly Shuravlev's installation "Black Holes" displayed in a black room with a constellation of crystal balls suspended from the ceiling, in each: a miniature portrait of a 20th century figure whose work has changed the world in one way or another. Examples: Gandhi, Einstein, Picasso, Bush...

By the way- the only pavilion that would not let me document was: guess... the American pavilion. Thats quite alright though because the Bruce Nauman retrospect was pretty boring and if it wasn't for the Czech and Slovenian pavilions, I would say it was the worst of them all. (Yea yea, golden lion blah blah. Don't really care about the reviews) What a disappointing structure too- the American pavilion. The only reason the Americans stayed in the game was because of individual works throughout the curated exhibition, which I will write about later .

I also wanted to share this piece (above) with yinz who are still with me. This is Aleksandra Mir's work (Poland) titled "A Million Free Postcards." She gave away postcards with images of 100 places characterized by the presence of water, all with the word "Venezia" printed on them- all to be mailed throughout the world by visitors of the biennale.

E-mail me your mailing address: mariomarzan at gmail dot com and I will send you a postcard ( a piece of Mir's work from the biennale) to participate in this piece. I'll even write you a personal note...

Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind

I have been working on a video/animation, which will eventually be projected on the floor of a darkened room. I have to say that I was quite influenced by the Pipilotti Rist piece at the Elles exhibition that I saw a few weeks ago at the Center Pompidou. The piece is also influenced by a couple of other things- a few I have mentioned in previous posts: Mister Wister Time Twister, time travel, the movie 'Millenium', etc. But also The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite's -

"The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk" - a graphic novel that tells the events of Paris being saved from an evil genius, resulting in The Eiffel Tower flying into space. The narration style of The Umbrella Academy is also of interest to me.

I have just finished rendering the background for the piece, which consists of video shot from under the Eiffel Tower, spinning and split into four parts creating a kaleidoscope effect. The image is also inverted and some motion/wind blurs and lighting filters have been applied as well. Here are a couple of screen shots. Im hoping that sharing my work in the blog will help me make better sense of it as I continue to work on it.

The video moves verrryyyy slow and took a while to render, so hopefully I will keep it "as is" for the background so I can move on to the actual animation. I wasn't too surprised to how easily the Eiffel Tower can look so spaceship - like with just a few tweeks. It's actually quite captivating as is...

The video also spins on an axis in the middle from the anchor point of the kaleidoscope.

Earlier this week I took a trip to Pere Lechaise Cemetary located on the 20th arrondissement of Paris- a popular "must see" spot in the city, for there a many famous peeps buried there. I visited all the main ones, but was particularly interested in looking for one, which led to an adventure. After checking out Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Jacques Louis David, Delacroix and Chopin, I decided to find the only Puerto Rican supposedly buried in Paris: Ramon Betances, the grandfather of Puerto Rican nationalismo; a.k.a: the father of the Puerto Rican peoples- as they say.

As you would have guessed - he wasn't listed in any of the visitors maps, so I had to inquire at the information services office. First, the office was not easy to find, even with a map. If you've been to Pere Lachaise you know how gigantic that place is. Then, they were not too crazy about helping me figure this out.  After getting the run around for a while I was led to this great gentleman who informed me that Betances was moved to Puerto Rico on a special request and that this happened long ago, but that he would be willing to show me on a map to the area where his remains once were.

Again, the map didn't work...It took me over two hours of searching and all I found was this half opened mossy old crypt, which looked as if Betances had crawled out of there himself. It was kind of like entering the 'barrio' part of the cemetery- all broken down and dilapidated. This shot is actually from some of the video I shot there.

Having journeyed for so long, I decided to stay a while and use some of the environments growing on the tomb for my "red men" I found at the toy store a few weeks ago. The moss seemed to create these beautiful miniature landscapes and the stone of the tombs looked like ruins. Some of these shots have not made it into the video piece, which I think it's a related piece, but not the same as the floor projection that I mentioned above- but I wanted share an idea of how insane I must have looked offering little red men to the memory of Betances as opposed to flowers.  I would like to think that I am offering my work to his memory with these- at least.

These distanced binocular shots are fitting in with some of the other shooting I did earlier this week when paying homage to Amelie of Montmartre- the part when Nino Quincampoix (who worked in pigalle!) looks down to the bottom of the hill with the observation binoculars from the top of Sacre Coeur.

(Above: Stills from "Amelie")

Ok... two other reoccurring/connecting factors to end the post. 'Red' and 'Pigalle'. A friend from grad school: Shana visited me in Montmartre last week, she was in Paris for a performance at the Cote Court Film festival. We hung out in Pigalle, which is just a few blocks away. It's the "red light district" of Paris. Its actually not as 'seedy" as I thought it would be and it's where a lot of the fun night spots are- we've hung out there quite a lot actually.

I leave for Venice in a couple of days to check out the Biennial, so check back. I have also been meaning to cover some of the street art / wheat pasting going on in Paris, so look out for that.