Veneza 2017 – parte I

Veneza 2017 – parte I                                               M. Botelho – 22-09-2017

Christine Macel

[…] the relative strength of the works in the exhibition is not the principle issue. The Arsenale includes notable presentations by a number of artists in various media […] but the impact of their work is blunted by Macel’s overall curatorial conceit. She has cherry-picked the rosier aspects of the countercultural moment while largely avoiding its thornier bits: war, discrimination, sociopolitical strife, madness, death. It’s all free love, no Vietnam. Chris Wiley https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-0

Compared to Okwui Enwezor’s ‘All the World’s Futures’ in 2015, […] Marcel’s exhibition feels lighthearted […]. It’s hard not to imagine that some of her choices are a reaction to (and against) Enwezor’s, because an exhibition could hardly feel more opposite. The curator describes her approach as ‘neo-humanism’, but more often it just feels sentimental, an ineffective response to the current global surge of fascism and intolerance. […] As a result, ‘Viva Arte Viva’ is pretty but lacks depth, like a false calm in the eye of a storm. […] The biennale is so often a tragedy of timing that I can’t help but wonder whether Enwezor and Macel’s exhibitions would be more successful if they traded place in time.
Evan Moffitt https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion 

GILLIAM, Sam | Born in 1933 in the United States, lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Sam Gilliam, Yves Klein Blue, 2016

“[Sam Gilliam] pushed painting out of the square and created the Drapes, that would become his hallmark. Indeed, Gilliam’s work sought to produce an open form beyond the canvas and beyond abstraction. […] These nomadic forms had to adapt to ever-changing contexts, leading the artist to environmental art.” A.K., Biennale Arte 2017, Viva Arte Viva, Short Guide, p. 50

BRUSCKY, Paulo | Born in 1949 in Brazil, lives and works in Recife

Paulo Bruscky, Arte Se Embala Como Se Quer

(Mail Art)

 “Antes da inauguração, o artista realizou uma performance […]. De um barco de carga, uma fila de performers, liderada pelo próprio Bruscky, saiu carregando várias caixas de madeira que foram colocadas de forma aleatória no relvado dos famosos Giardini da Bienal. No lado de fora de cada uma delas, de vários tamanhos e vazias, haviam selos postais e etiquetas como "frágil", "este lado para cima" e "Arte se Embala Como Se Quer", nome da instalação.” http://www.jb.com.br/cultura/noticias/2017/05/13/na-bienal-de-veneza-artista-brasileiro-critica-politica/ 

“With this performance, Bruscky questions the responsibility of the artist in contemporary society and offers a global and international reading of the world of art able to abolish borders.” M.S., Biennale Arte 2017, Viva Arte Viva, Short Guide, p. 49   

“Immediately upon entering the Giardini portion of “Arte Viva Arte,” you find several artworks dedicated to artists sleeping or in other stages of active rest, ready to receive inspiration—the state of otium Macel describes as “a space of productive idleness and mind work.” https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/the-unmissable-highlights-of-christine-macels-2017-venice-biennale-956207

STILINOVIĆ, Mladen | Born in 1947 in Serbia, died in Croatia in 2016

Mladen Stilinovic, Artist at Work, 1978-2017

WEST, Franz | 1947–2012, Austria

Franz West, Otium, 1996

(Otium, the Latin for which means leisure time or meditation)

“Franz West’s Otium (1995) displays the artist’s annotated studio notes, which he recited in a video that plays on a small monitor. West, a typically formal artist, scrutinizes his raw, unrealized ideas as artworks unto themselves, an embrace of one of conceptualism’s central tenets.” https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion

KASPER, Dawn | Born in 1977 in the United States, lives and works in New York

Dawn Kasper, The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars, 2017.

“Kasper, a talkative musical autodidact, has filled the space with furniture, instruments and art supplies from her own studio in the Bronx, and is inviting neighbouring artists and strangers she meets to collaborate, perform at open mic sessions or simply sit and chat. It’s a marathon restaging of Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment, a performance and residency Kasper completed in 2012 at the Whitney Museum in New York. When I spoke to her, she wasn’t sure what would happen over the course of the summer; the uncertainty is tantalizing […].” Evan Moffitt https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion

ELIASSON, Olafur | Born in 1967 in Denmark, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin

Olafur Eliasson, Green Light: An Artistic Workshop, 2017

“Meant to «address issues of forced migration», […] the workshop is in fact a complex and ambitious project set up to help these asylum-seekers acclimate to life in Italy. Here’s the way it works. Collaborating with nine NGOs, the studio put out an open call seeking volunteers to help out in the workshop from the pools of migrants who had already passed through refugee camps. So far 40 have signed up, mainly from Nigeria but also from elsewhere in Africa, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and two from China. Because the studio is prohibited from compensating these asylum-seekers financially, they provide them with meals […] and also access to Italian-language classes, legal counseling, a psychologist, and a platform for creativity for any who want it.” Andrew Goldstein https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/the-unmissable-highlights-of-christine-macels-2017-venice-biennale-956207

“[…] the project is typical of the mainstream art world’s boutique approach to hands-on-politics, one that often ropes its beneficiaries into being art objects themselves, as live performers.” Holland Cotter https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/arts/design/venice-biennale-whose-reflection-do-you-see.html?mcubz=0

SHARIF, Hassan | 1951–2016, United Arab Emirates

Hassan Sharif Studio (Supermarket), 2016

Three decades of sculptures by Hassan Sharif – colourful agglomerations of banal objects with coils of rope, elastic and rubber tubing – sit in the following gallery on shelves that could have been borrowed from the artist’s studio, or a supermarket aisle. […] the studio here appears as a space for the mind to wander, and for free associations to be made. https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion 

 LEE Mingwei | Born in Taiwan in 1964, lives and works in Paris

Lee Mingwei, The Mending Project, 2009-2015

Lee Mingwei, When Beauty Visits, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu_xRhbtjZQ

“A woman in a white robe appears, bells chiming around her ankles as she moves, and leads someone to sit down. She exchanges a few soft words of welcome, and then leaves. A moment later, she returns bearing a letter on a tray, the person takes it and departs, […] When she gives them the letter, she tells them that it’s an artwork from the artist, and that they should open it “whenever beauty visits,” which could be in a day, a month, or a year.” Andrew Goldstein https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/the-unmissable-highlights-of-christine-macels-2017-venice-biennale-956207

ENGSTED, Søren | Born in 1974 in Denmark, lives and works in Copenhagen

Soren Engsted, Levitation, 2010 (installation view, 2017)

“He sits cross-legged on an Indian levitation chair, framed at the centre of the screen, and tells the public a number of anecdotes about the themes of flight, levitation and gravity. Engsted ironically lists a number of examples associated with the myth of Icarus, the discovery of the hot-air balloon and the airplane […], the physical characteristics of chicken and why it is unable to fly.”

C.B., Biennale Arte 2017, Viva Arte Viva, Short Guide, p. 54

MAKHACHEVA, Taus | Born in 1983 in Russia, lives and works in Moscow and Makhachkala

Taus Makhacheva, Tightrope, 2015, 4K video, 58’ 10’’

“The project, realized in collaboration with the Museum of Dagestan, uses 61 actual works of art from the museum's storage to display the fine line between valuing local heritage and a community entering a larger global narrative. Makhacheva wants us to question the strategies contemporary museums from the West have on local communities and what happens to the art of the past (pre- and post-Soviet times, in this case). There are battle paintings from the Caucasian War alongside social realism. In the beautifully composed cliffhanger, we are left to resolve our own cultures and representation of them. Makhacheva puts forth the tensions between tradition and modernity, local and global.”

https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/j55g8x/8-venice-biennale-breakout-artists

“There's this idea of balancing when you're involved in cultural production, balancing with survival and balancing on believing that your works will enter history. For me, it was also kind of talking about how you make a certain history of art visible”. Taus Makhacheva https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/j55g8x/8-venice-biennale-breakout-artists

DÍAZ MORALES, Sebastián | Born in 1975 in Argentina, lives and works in Amsterdam

Sebastián Díaz Morales, Suspension, 2014-17, installation, HD format, 14’ 30’’

“Suspension explores the boundaries between reality and fiction. […] It begins with a chimerical view of a thick cloud of vapor that dissipates to reveal a man suspended in space. He seems to be falling in slow motion, his eyes closed, transcending time.” M.S.

Biennale Arte 2017, Viva Arte Viva, Short Guide, p. 78.

LATHAM, John | Born in 1921 in Zambia, died in 2006 in the UK

“[John Latham’s] first worked with books in a work based on El Greco's Toledo masterpiece The Burial of Count Orgaz […]. From this Latham moved on to constructing towers from volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica and torching them. Books are only objects, but they embody the idea of civilisation and the enlightenment, and burning them had deep and fearful resonances in the post-Nazi period.”
 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/jan/07/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

LIU, Ye | Born in 1964 in China, lives and works in Beijing

Liu Ye, Books on books, 2007, oil on canvas

BINION, McArthur | Born in 1946 in the United States, lives and works in Chicago

“Completed between 2014 and 2016, this suite of works consists of abstract patterns painted on top of color copies of Binion’s birth certificate, and pages from the address book he kept from the 1970s to 1992, when he left New York to teach in Chicago.” http://www.artnews.com/2017/05/09/mcarthur-binion-addresses-the-past-in-a-stunning-suite-of-paintings/  

MURESAN, Ciprian| Born in 1977 in Romania, lives and works in Cluj (Romania)

Ciprian Muresan, All Images from a book on Tretyakov Gallery, 2015, pencil on paper
“The artist continues his series of “Palimpsest” drawings, started in 2013, wherein every image from a given book or magazine is hand-rendered (with the aid of a light box) in overlapping layers of graphite pencil onto a single sheet of paper.” http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2017/8178  

WAHEED, Hajra | Born in 1980 in Canada, lives and works in Montreal

Hajra Waheed, Our Naufrage 1-10, 2014, gouache on masonite

[…] storytelling drives Montreal-based artist Hajra Waheed's haunting exploration of migration, part of a larger project called Sea Change.

[…] a sombre and beautiful conjuring of the migrant's lonely journey. The idea came about when in 2011 she read about 166 pilgrims from Kolkata, India, to Mecca who disappeared before returning home. "Here were 166 people who just went missing. Was it in the name of salvation? A better life or a new one? How did this disappearance occur?" she asks.
She also reflects on the news of migrant drownings in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venice-biennale-pootoogook-farmer-1.4114186   

MARWAN | Born in 1934 in Syria, died in 2016 in Germany

Marwan, A Light, 1973, oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm

“The show’s most masterful paintings are by the late Syrian artist Marwan, completed between the mid-1960s and his death last year. A chronological hang traces the development of Marwan’s style, from more conventional yet disturbing portraits (a lone figure in bed grasping a pair of tiny shoes, or a man projectile vomiting) to abstract, impasto depictions of faces […].” Evan Moffitt https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion

LAI, Firenze | Born in 1984 in Hong Kong, lives and works in Hong Kong

Firenze Lai, Clockwise and Counterclockwise, 2013, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

“Firenze Lai’s portraits of distended, bottom-heavy bodies in mundane but warped spaces have a melancholic quality reminiscent of Edvard Munch; the best of these, Clockwise and Counterclockwise (2013) shows a woman holding two umbrellas running around a silvery tree trunk, the acrylic ground shifting like a whirlpool beneath her oversized orange feet.” Evan Moffitt
https://frieze.com/article/57th-venice-biennale-central-pavilion

ROSE, Rachel | Born in 1986 in the United States, lives and works in New York

Rachel Rose, Lake Valley, 2016 , HD video, 8’25’’

(A hybrid between a rabbit, a dog and a fox)

“Rachel Rose’s “Lake Valley” installation, which features an animated video about a pet left home alone, is like stumbling into someone else’s dream. “I created the main character from looking at all these different narratives of children’s stories alongside the emergence of the idea of the child in relationship to the adult,” Rose says. “One through line I noticed was abandonment. I wanted to focus on this sense of loneliness as I’ve seen it in different narratives but also as I’ve felt it.” Rose’s animation is layered with thousands of 19th-century illustrations which she lifted from children’s books; these patterns bleed into one another to form the landscape of the garden where the creature escapes to as well as its home. Almost psychedelic in its movements, “Lake Valley” leaves the audience with a sense of unease that feels at once fresh and familiar.” Kat Herriman https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/t-magazine/art/venice-biennale-best-highlights-mark-bradford-tehching-hsieh-alicja-kwade.html?mcubz=0

PORTER, Liliana | Born in 1941 in Argentina, lives and works in New York

Liliana Porter, El hombre com el hacha y otras situaciones breves, 2014

“Liliana Porter presents the captivating, yet also harrowing miniature El hombre con el hacha y otras situaciones breves, Venecia 2017, a diorama atop a white platform. At one end a tiny toy figure swings an axe over his head. In front of him, as if ruined by his blows, lie broken and strewn objects—overturned furniture, scattered books, fractured figurines, and more—all scattered with ceramic shards. It brings to mind entropy, villages ravaged by war, toppled monuments, and archaeological traces of the vastness of human history, but this all plays out in dollhouse dimensions.” Gregory Volk http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/the-artists-sake-christine-macels-venice-biennale/  

NENGUDI, Senga | Born in 1943 in the United States, lives and works in Colorado Springs

“In 1974, pregnant with her son, Nengudi began work on the RSVP series of abstract sculptures created using Nylon stockings. Stretched, knotted and weighted with sand, they evoke the elasticity of the female body subjected to the transformations of pregnancy […].” M.S., Biennale Arte 2017, Viva Arte Viva, Short Guide, p. 80.

“In the early days, Nengudi would activate the work with performances, but these days, she uses the help of dancers. And for “A.C.Q.,” her new work for the biennale, she enlisted the help of a fan, which makes the pantyhose tremble.” Kat Herriman
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/t-magazine/art/venice-biennale-best-highlights-mark-bradford-tehching-hsieh-alicja-kwade.html?mcubz=0