53rd Venice Biennale Day 8
Oct 21 2009
(Sorry for the delay; I wanted to to these day by day, but the basement comes first!)
Day 8 Saturday 9/26. Collateral Exhibitions and National Pavilions in Castello and the Island of Certoza
The morning was again spent seeing national pavilions, this beyond the Rialto bridge on the Grand Canal. This was a group over a few Palazzi, Iceland in the basement of Singapore, with New Zealand down the street. The 2 latter fought against the lushness of their surroundings, and the Singapore pavilion The Life of Imitation, by Ming Wong was constrained by it’s subject matter, the Singaporean film industry of the 60’s and 70’s. To be this culturally specific you either have to go completely opaque (like Mark Wallinger at the GB Pavilion in 2001) , or reference something that the viewer can at least have some inkling of the importance. Instead we were left with gorgeous kitsch, which I am not entirely sure was the complete intent of the artist. Iceland with The End by Ragnar Kjartansson transformed these national concerns by turning the boathouse of the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusa into the hangout for pretty boys who smoke, drink beer, play their LPs and paint, while lounging on the grand canal. A perfect evocation of sybaritic indolence, this played to the national stereotype of Iceland as the youth hangout of the world, as well as to the romantic decadence of a C19th Venice as glimpsed in movies like Death In Venice. Very successful, and with all the beer bottles and exposed brick, very like The Soap Factory.
North into Cannaregio district to the Schola Grande Della Misericordia, and a show that I had been eager to see, East West Divan. Curated by Jemima Montagu and supported by The Turquoise Mountain (a project supported, amongst others, by the Prince of Wales, to find markets for traditional crafts from the tribal middle east) it showed work from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. However , first, installed below was the Lithuanian Pavilion, with work by Zilvinas Kempinas . This was the large scale installation par excellence , with humble materials (video tape and plywood) expertly deployed to mind-bending effect in the historic space. Big bold and beautiful, this was a deeply satisfying work on every level. Upstairs to East West Divan; here the works were displayed cleverly in interlocking spaces, and one ascended to the space on a grant staircase lit by neon chandeliers of Persian script by Shezad Dawood. This is just the kind of exhibition that one comes to a biennale to see; a selection top flight artists almost completely unknown in the west. Stand outs; Mohammed Imran Querishi, Aisha kalid, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmian.
After a lunch break at San Michale Cemetery Island (peered through the grille at the new David Chipperfield extension), we set off for Isola della Certosa, an island to the NE of Venice that has only been recently reclaimed from the Italian navy, and is being slowly converted into a yacht station, hotel and conference center. We going to see the work of John Gerrard , Animated Scene, an Irish artist working in Vienna (we had been tipped off by my friend Gary Thomas that this was worth the trip). Buses have only just started stopping at Certoza, so as we rounded the back of the Arsenale we were a little nervous that the vaparetto would actually stop. The yacht station itself was a little Club Med, and this unfortunately overpowered the disappointing slight works in La Citta Ideale. This project again organized through UNESCO and AIAP had been trailed with large ads in Art in America etc, for the glass block wall of Shan Shen Sheng. This was in actual fact not some kind of towering monument but actually quite a modest construction strung along the edge of the car park. The work that really drew my attention was Pino Castagna Gli occhi degli alberi (Eyes of the Trees), a traditional bronze and fused glass monument, that formed a nice vertical counter pint to the architecture of the yacht station. This project, sponsored by the City of Venice seemed to more aboiut getting people out to Certosa.
John Gerrad’s three video works were strung through the vast prefab interior of one of the boat sheds, and at first we passed over it pretty quickly; what we saw were huge panoramas of Midwestern landscape argri-business. Since we live in the Midwest, these ostensively critical images of our 'own' space seemed of little consequence (we know it sucks in the Midwest, you should try living here), but, when you got up close to each screen it became clear that these were not real images at all, but virtual, and immediately one’s concentration, trained to attend the unreal over the actual, sprangs into focus. Gerrads pieces were incredibly complex virtual renderings, simiulacra of landcsapes, one of a dust bowl storm of the 1930’s , one of a hog barn, another of a single laborer, painting a single panel on a feed barn, a task that will take him, a panel a day until 2019. The work was literally arresting. We stayed and watched until the storm was done.
After getting a another complimentary catalogue, we then explored Certosa, reveling the unaccustomed (coming from Minnesota) of un-mediated ruins of centuries of military occupation. It was again wonderful to be alone on this deserted island away from the hubbub of the city.
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