After a one-year extension, the 59th Venice Biennale opened on 23 April.
Curated by curator Cecilia Alemani, the exhibition features the short story "The Milk of Dreams" by British-born Mexican surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, which explores posthuman, metamorphosis, ecology and more. At the same time, this biennale is also the highest number of female artists, with more than 80% of the participating artists being women.
According to New York Times critic Jason Farago, this Venice Biennale is an unbalanced event. He believes that the intensity of the theme exhibition is very large, and through the curator's planning, it shows a surrealist revival. In contrast, the presentation of the national pavilion is the worst in the past 20 years.
Now, Venice is a bit lost in the fog of time. In March 2020, the coronavirus appeared in these tranquil waters. Some rumor-mongers have posted photos of dolphins appearing in The Bay of San Marco, as well as photos of swans swimming on the unspoiled Blue Grand Canal. Humans disappeared and Venice became a natural paradise! The city, which Henry James calls a "reservoir of solace," has been compressed to a size that can be shared: an aquatic utopia that can be seen on a touchscreen, and the virus is coming at us in a sickle-like fashion.
The staff placed signs near the main exhibition site of the Venice Biennale.
The dolphin photo is a scam. But, judging by the crowded, chaotic, and confusing preview of the 2022 Venice Biennale, the feeling that humans are the enemies of life and beauty may be correct. The world's oldest and most prestigious international contemporary art exhibition opened to the public on Saturday (23 April) after a one-year delay. The COVID-19 pandemic has not reduced the size of the biennale or diminished the arrogance of visitors. Yes, in mid-April, the crowds in Venice are a little less, and the number of luxury yachts has declined. Still, it's Venice, and the Biennale remains the most flammable mixture of art, blending creative thinking, amazing wealth, and global culture heading for the future.
Venice Biennale theme pavilion
First of all, a brief introduction: the Venice Biennale is a two-part exhibition. This year is the 59th edition, while the first Venice Biennale was held in 1895 and provided the temperature for contemporary art. Participating countries usually have their own pavilions, for example, this year's American Pavilion invited the popular sculptor and ceramicist Simone Leigh. On top of that, Venice's art venues all host their own major exhibitions during the Biennale, while traders, foundations and speculators rent palaces along the river, hosting exhibitions of museum quality or temporary exhibitions that can be purchased directly.
This year's theme exhibition was curated by Cecilia Alemani, an Italian living in New York. This themed exhibition has been carefully designed and has often been successful before. Most of the exhibitors in this exhibition are women, and surrealism, robots and animals and plants are the key words of the exhibition. New York-based artists Amy Sillman and Jacqueline Humphries present new paintings; the remains of Los Angeles artist Kaari Upson, who died last year, are also on display in the gallery; and many of the overlooked works in the 20's world are by Italian women artists. I will write a more detailed review of cecilia's curated exhibition, but I will say for now: her feminism, surrealism and ecologism make up a well-organized, challenging exhibition, and her optimistic vision of liberation through imagination is very rare today.
Brick House (2019), Simone Leigh
In contrast, the presentation of the National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was the worst I had felt during my 20-year visit. Half-tepid conceptualism is simply a nightmare: there are boring sculptures, there are works on political criticism, there are also themes such as gender and the Internet, and these half-tepid works are simply a nightmare. Among them, Maria Eichhorn, an analyst at an art institution, and Dumb Type, a Japanese performing arts and technology group, have handed over the most boring works of their artistic careers.
Compared with the previous biennale, breakthrough works such as the huge climatic opera "Sun & Sea (Marina)" in the Lithuanian Pavilion have ceased to exist in this pavilion. Surprisingly, young artists appear one after another. Inside the Serbian and Italian pavilions, we saw the confluence of the sky and the sea in the distance, a screensaver program that evokes memories of migration and loss. If you are not "criticizing" or "interrogating" certain pre-existing materials, you will be attracted to the interesting houses of the Danish artist Uffe Isolotto, whose large number of sculptures are mediated with pungent hay; or you will like the works of Austrian artists Jakob lena knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl. Their soft sculptures have an incomparably correct color scheme. Venice is a city that has failed to match the past for more than 500 years. This year, these works are also devastating.
Inside the Polish Pavilion, Roman artist Ma gorzata Mirga-Tas created a 12-part tapestry.
Visitors see works by artists Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl at the Austrian Pavilion.
Only two national pavilion artists fully supported the occasion. One is the artist Ma gorzata Mirga-Tas, a Roman artist representing the Polish Pavilion who decorated the Polish Pavilion with 12-part tapestries. She uses stitched muslins, fabrics, lace and burlap fragments to connect the gypsies and their daily lives. Her works are as imposing as urban murals, passionately depicting archers, guitarists, activists and coffin bearers. But eventually, these "murals" were pushed to the brink of European history.
Douglas and artist Lady Sanity create a video installation for the Canada Pavilion
Douglas collaborated with Cairo musician Raptor.Credit on the video installation "ISDN."
The other is Stan Douglas, Vancouver's preeminent video artist. He delved into several revolutions of 2011, with his works Arab Spring, London Riots, and Occupy Wall Street interspersed between the Canada Pavilion and an old Salt Depot. Among them, he carefully edited the "Occupy" series and "Arab Spring" and made a two-screen video, named "ISDN". It also reveals Douglas's keen ability to reconstruct the present through imaginary interventions in the past.
Here we see two artists from London and two Cairo rappers with An Egyptian style who perform a thrilling transnational call and response. But it's not just a music film. Douglas recorded the lyrics and the bass line at 140 beats per minute, using an algorithm to cut the British and Egyptian sounds and sew them into a new form of expression. He presents an imaginary community of music and fiber-optic cables.
Among the other national pavilions, Simone Leigh's American Pavilion stands out for its ambition, production value and noble character. Her new ceramic and bronze works blend African baga masks, Egyptian funeral statue motifs, and the modernist styles of Giacometti and Ernst. These works redefine the sculptural style of Africa and Oceania. In addition, Leigh's Brick House, a 16-foot-tall bust that was previously exhibited in New York's High Line Park, is now in Venice.) Outside the American Pavilion, Leigh built a temporary thatched roof outside the neo-Palladian pavilion to echo the colonial pavilion of the Last Century World Expo.
Since artist Hans Haacke vandalized the German Pavilion in 1993, the buildings of the altered or obscured pavilions have become a reliable way to indict history. However, the artworks in the pavilion still need to play their own works. Leigh's ceramic works are still the most successful. For example, her work Jug is an oversized kettle with southern American figures embedded in enlarged shells. The body of the pot actually represents a Lafite grass skirt, using surrealism to achieve the appropriation of African and Caribbean afterlife culture.
At the American Pavilion exhibition, Simone Leigh's masonry work "Jug".
Lee's bronze works are more sticky. The more figurative her work is, the more stale it becomes, and her work Last Garment is a frank depiction of a Jamaican washerwoman in a pool of water, but finds nothing against a majestic backdrop. In contrast to this work depicting history, The Roman tapestries of Tass and douglas's transcontinental music are intermittently rejuvenated here. In addition, there is a black-and-white film in the exhibition hall depicting a bonfire scene created using its sculptures. What needs to be said is that the artist should trust her original medium.
So, welcome to the Venice Biennale, the most unbalanced and frustrating in memory. Now, the Venice Biennale is clustered in the midst of the pandemic, open against the backdrop of the European (Russo-Ukrainian) war. Never before has the Biennale shown that the National Pavilion is only a secondary part of the Biennale compared to the theme exhibition, and the art fair form of one country and one pavilion has passed the shelf life of several decades.
Exhibition site of the British Pavilion
Exhibition site of the Japan Pavilion
Was it COVID-19 that caused this result? What I wonder is whether these years of closure, and our lives imprisoned by digital screens, have erased our last commitment to art. Art is not just a medium of communication. Venice is a city that defines epidemics for the whole world: the word quarantine is derived from the Venetians. The Latin word for "quarantine" is "forty days." Forty days was when the Venetians quarantined ships in port in order to eliminate the plague; Titian died of the plague in Venice in 1576; Thomas Mann's Death of Venice turned the cholera outbreak into a symbol of social decay. Now we have masks, which is mandatory during visits to the exhibition. A good lesson given to us by the Venetians is that the plague will eventually come to an end. And what kind of art can be produced from the heaviest weight on them? This is another problem.
(This article is compiled from The New York Times, by Jason Farago, a critic.)
Attached: Venice Biennale site direct hit
Liu Jiayu "Virtual Pole Quiet Du" Artificial intelligence, 3D printing, 3D projection, real-time rendering, size variable The Chinese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale exhibits works
In any sense, it is not easy for this year's Venice Biennale to be successfully held.
Li Zhenhua, the curator who will go to the Venice Biennale every time, participated in the Biennale with more excitement. In his opinion: "This year's Venice Biennale as a whole is under a dynamic relationship. Whether it is the dual threat of epidemic and war, or the withdrawal of Russia and Ukraine, to the re-participation of the exhibition. All indicate the turbulent state in which the world is now in. ”
It is in this turmoil that the "Yuanjing" theme exhibition of the Chinese Pavilion, with Zhang Zikang as curator and Sun Dongdong as assistant curator, responds to today's era in the way of Chinese culture - this is a posture from a distant civilization that is more open and tolerant of the world, and what flows out of it is a kind of slow "ancient meaning".
"Although the whole space construction of this exhibition looks very simple, we have done a very complicated job behind it. Since the preview of the exhibition for two days, there are many people taking pictures on the spot, and they can feel the attraction of the exhibition to the audience. Sun Dongdong, assistant curator of the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, shared his on-site feelings. Sun Dongdong said that due to the impact of the epidemic, the Chinese pavilion has increased many difficulties in setting up the exhibition than originally planned. For example, Wang Yuyang's outdoor work "Snowman", the material of its steel frame structure was originally planned to be made in China and then shipped to Italy, but in the end it could only be made in Italy, which also brought a lot of production troubles, but this work became one of the highlights of this year's Chinese Pavilion.
Wang Yuyang "Snowman" 265×190× 285cm brass, copper, concrete, stainless steel 2021 Venice Biennale China Pavilion exhibited works
Zhang Zikang said in an interview that the "Yuanjing" advocates a cosmic life consciousness of symbiosis, a harmonious realm full of Chinese cultural thought, wisdom and vitality, where the purpose of "creating the realm" is not to establish a new division, on the contrary, its purpose is to transcend the boundaries of reality, re-establish a universal way of reflecting on the self, and thus explore the possibility of constructing a common future for mankind. Although digital works account for the majority, their final presentation still requires a lot of consideration and practice. "Because the ultimate virtual number needs to be physically presented. The buildings in the armory exhibition area are all cultural relics and are protected, so we need to build and reconstruct the space ourselves. Moreover, according to the previous exhibition experience in Venice, all the construction materials are best prepared by themselves, because the local situation is more complicated, one is the high cost, the other is that the local materials and efficiency may not meet our requirements, but also consider the safety of the construction and some local emergencies, etc., so the input cost of the entire exhibition is larger. Zhang Zikang introduced.
Xu Lei Correspondances/Xinghui 266×350× 48.5cm Acrylic, Metal Material, Electric Rail 2022 Venice Biennale China Pavilion Exhibits
The list of this year's Venice Biennale, which includes Barbara Kruger, Cecilia Vicu a and Paula Rego, is still dominated by artists who have a reputation in Europe and the United States, except that the emergence of female artists is more prominent, "My exhibition will be an intergenerational exhibition that will include young artists, famous artists, forgotten artists, and even dead artists." I try to explore this topic through different generations because I'm always interested in what it will be like to put the masters and young artists together. I also want to give the audience perspectives that can make all kinds of connections. Alemani has said that the biennale does not focus on a particular generation.
Artist Zheng Bo lives on Lantau Island, where he has collaborated with plants to create ecological art
Screenshot of Lu Yang's "Hello World", based on the artist himself, 2020
Li Shuang, an artist from Wuyishan, now lives in Berlin and Geneva
"The exhibition is rooted in posthuman thinking," Alemani said, "and many contemporary artists are imagining a posthuman state that challenges the presumed Western state and the standard by which whites measure things." They brought different alliances and wonderful bodies. That's why the exhibition includes a large number of artists with women and gender uncertainties. In an interview with ALTnews, Alemani called her biennial "an exhibition across history that creates a dialogue between the present and the past, a dialogue between ostracized stories." ”
(The on-site part is based on the relevant reports of "Art News", "Artron Art Network" and "ArtAlpha Art Alpha" WeChat public accounts)