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...