The press conference of the 59th Venice International Art Biennale, source: Venice Biennale official website
The Venice Biennale is an art festival with a history of over a century and one of the most important art events in Europe. Together with Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the Biennale in São Paulo, Brazil, it is known as the world's three major art exhibitions, and its qualifications rank first among the three major exhibitions, and it is known as the carnival of the art world.
Poster of the 59th Venice Biennale
This century-spanning festival has led the history of modern and contemporary art around the world with a distributed, open and diverse natural management system, attracting artists, collectors, curators, scholars, art lovers and professionals in the art industry from all over the world.
Greentown Garden Area of the 59th Venice Biennale
Source: Venice Biennale official website
Outside the theme pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale Greentown Garden Exhibition Area
Source: Venice Biennale official website
On April 23, local time, the 59th Venice Biennale, which was supposed to be held in 2021, will usher in the opening ceremony. The Venice Biennale is an art biennale featuring the Short Story "The Milk of Dreams" by British-born Mexican surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, which explores posthuman, metamorphosis, ecology and other issues, and the exhibition itself is like a revival of surrealism in this era.
Press conference of the 59th Venice Biennale
The exhibition's title, "Milk of Dreams," comes from a short story by Leonora Carrington about a child transformed into a surreal painting that depicts fantastic interior scenes as well as ecstatic landscapes, where the differences between animal and human life are erased.
Fairy tale book "Milk of Dreams"
This year, the Venice Biennale featured 213 artists from 58 countries, with more than 90% of the participating artists being women, the highest number of female artists.
Cecilia Alemani, curator of the 59th Venice Biennale, is the fifth female chief curator in the exhibition's history, while her husband, Massimigliano Joni, curated the 2013 Venice Biennale. Alemani admits that she does not want to advertise a "feminist exhibition", but since the founding of the Venice Biennale, the participation of male and female artists has been unequal.
Cecilia Alemani, chief curator of the 59th Venice Biennale (left), and Roberto Sicotto, president of the Venice Biennale (right), preview the 59th Venice Biennale
In addition to focusing on women, this biennale spans a wide range of ages in the selection of artists, and the styles of works are diverse, bringing an artistic dialogue across time and space for the audience who shuttle through the exhibition halls. There are about 80 new works in this year's Venice Biennale. Some of them are commissioned works, while others are works created by artists over the past few years. In addition, there are 26 Italian artists and more than 180 first-time artists, both popular art stars and up-and-coming art newcomers, whose creative themes cover the body, politics, posthumanity, decentralization, racial issues, ecological environment, etc., responding to many urgent issues with rich perspectives and forward-looking practices.
The scene of the 59th Venice Biennale
In addition, history is one of the highlights of this year's Venice Biennale. Alemani has five "time capsules" in the exhibition, most of which are museum loans, echoing the themes of the exhibition, such as deformation, the cyber concept, or the body as a container, but not from the perspective of art history.
Alemani thought of "deformation" at the beginning of the curation, and after the epidemic began and the exhibition was postponed, she tried to expand this context, to think further about how our bodies are with technology, and to compare this change with the changes in the earth and the climate" Therefore, for body deformation, you can say that it is through a surrealist perspective, a futuristic perspective, or the perspective of some Dada artists, or even a Bauhaus artist. Alemani introduced.
In Alemani's view, people today are living in a world similar to the era of the Surrealist movement. "Surrealism was conceived from the effects of the First World War... Today, many artists are using similar methods to respond to the times. ”
Simone Leigh Brick House 2019
Ali Shelly Titan 2022
Leonora Carrington, The Good Bird: Portrait of Max Ernst
The theme of the exhibition at the Chinese Pavilion of this year's Venice Biennale is "Yuanjing", with Zhang Zikang, Director of cafarica Art Museum, as curator, Assistant Curator Sun Dongdong, Wang Yuyang's sculpture "Snowman" (2021), CAFA Academy of Science and Technology And Art Institute and Tsinghua University Brain and Intelligence Laboratory joint project "Jungle" (2021), Xu Lei's "Correspondances" (2021), Liu Jiayu's "Virtual Pole Quiet Du" (2021) and Wang Yuyang's "Virtual Pole Quiet Du" (2021) Wang Yuyang#: Quarter (Solar Terms) (2021).
The exhibition hall layout of the Chinese Pavilion buzz Zhuangziyu Studio
The exhibition hall space of the Chinese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale is designed by BUZZ Zhuangziyu Studio, drawing on the changes and ingenuity of the traditional landscape freehand space, combined with the artists' works in the exhibition hall to reproduce the artistic conception of Chinese culture. At the same time, through the scenes of the indoor exhibition hall of the Chinese Pavilion and the outdoor area of the garden, the rich interaction and internal connection between the space and the artist's work and the audience are established.
Liu Jiayu 《Imaginary Pole Quiet Duc"
Artificial intelligence, 3D printing, 3D projection, real-time rendering, variable size
As a representative of the new generation of young artists, Liu Jiayu, who has overseas study experience, shows the innovation and boldness of the post-90s generation of artists in their creative methods and concepts, and the work "Virtual Pole Jingdu" is based on a large number of real Chinese terrain data, using double-layer machine deep learning and artificial intelligence to generate multiple sets of different sets of virtual three-dimensional dynamic graphics, and finally attaching artificial intelligence to the virtual field skin to learn and train 10,000 Chinese ink paintings. Drawing on the concept of "Yugong", the earliest geographical imagination and thinking about China, the Chinese landform was reshaped by artificial intelligence to depict the map, creating a new geographical origin for Chinese civilization in the new era. This field, full of unknowns but extremely real in the senses, is essentially virtually generated. It comes from the real world but does not exist in the real world, it exists outside human experience, but it reaches the transcendental natural archetype. In this work, the "virtual" is no longer the target of nothingness, which shakes reality because it is close to reality, thus providing the possibility of revealing the invisible "truth", or it can be said to "know the truth and keep its false".
Wang Yuyang, "The Snowman", 265×190×285cm
Brass, copper, concrete, stainless steel 2021
The works "Snowman" and "Wang Yuyang#: Quarter (Festival)" unveiled at the Venice Biennale continue the unique thinking that Wang Yuyang has always had since his artistic creation, and the works are based on the existing prototypes, after deep thinking and continuous improvement, spanning experimentation and temporality, the artist is reduced to an audience, enjoying reading and trying to understand the whole of the work.
Wang Yuyang Wang Yuyang #: Quarter (Solar Terms)
Resin, flavonoids, copper, bronze, stainless steel, tree
800×260×400cm 2021
Xu Lei's works contain a metaphor for "time", which is also the core content of ancient Chinese art, such as gardens, paintings, and poetry. In the past thirty years, Xu Lei has taken "the return of time", "the reincarnation of time", "the interlacing of time" and "the transfer of time" as the content of works in different periods, making his views not only have the dynamic change of "changing scenery step by step", but also lose the understanding of the landscape of world civilization, through continuous comparison of knowledge genealogy, generating the dimension of works that reflect each other, not only opening up the boundaries of ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, but also looking back at the future through the ancient.
Xu Lei, Correspondances, 266×350×48.5cm
Acrylic, metal materials, electric rails 2022
Born in the collaborative research process of the Institute of Science and Technology and Art of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Brain and Intelligence Laboratory of Tsinghua University, the AT group members are committed to exploring and practicing new paths and possibilities for the intersection and integration of art and science and technology in today's era of multidisciplinary and multi-field cross-development, promoting artistic development and innovation while providing new imagination and practice for science and technology. AT is also an acronym for Art and Technology. This combination is based on thinking and attitudeing towards the common world of human beings, and collective thinking, discussion and then putting it into practice can make the world a better place. Panelists will continue to attract new like-minded members from different fields, depending on the direction of the research and the characteristics of different projects.
AT Group Jungle
Artificial intelligence deep learning, mirror printing, variable size, 2021
The Venice Biennale will run until 27 November.