Venice, Arsenale and Giardini, May 11 – November 24, 2019, https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/
(videos below text)
Venice Biennale… the original mega-show, the art circus. A lot of stuff. This year the show was doubled: The seemingly never-ending long noodle-shaped Arsenale docks exhibition had its double in the large Central Biennale Pavilion located in the gardens (Giardini). The exhibit in Arsenale was called “Proposition A” and the exhibit in Giardini was called “Proposition B”. Both A and B featured the same artists, and the idea was to feature different works, as different as possible. For some artists it worked (e.g. showing larger sculptural works in one site and smaller works or works in a different medium in the other site), for some artists it did not (that is for those that are too concerned about their unique, always distinguishable artist brand, and work with a strict visual style). The A/B split was a good idea anyway, because the repetition of artists and works (sometimes similar, sometimes different) served as a reminder of what one has already seen, allowing to slowly a network of references in one’s brain. At least for some of the names.
Regarding the exhibits themselves, large size and strong impressions ruled. Minimum scale would be human scale (1-2 m), and maximum… as high as the ceiling. That means, large sculptures. And bright colors. The text below focuses on three categories: Moving image works, East Europe works and East Asia works. It limits itself to the Proposition A/B exhibition (“May You Live In Interesting Times”) and does not talk about individual national exhibits.
Moving image works
There were less moving image works than I would expect, and even less interesting ones. Some of them that I was looking forward to, like Apichatpong Werasethakul’s or Hito Steyerl’s, were dissapointing. Werasethakul simply works better in cinema, and Steyerl seems to have decided to just poke fun at the organizers and audiences by her large-scale video environments featuring electronic dance music juxtaposed with colorful images of sea life and Venice streets modified by artificial intelligence.
Ryoji Ikeda also seemed to be running out of steam, and his large scale projection hardly showed anything different from the works he produced in the last decade.
Alex Da Corte’s video, as well as the installation, was good and worthy to see: Re-enacting and redefining American cultural stereotypes.
Korakrit Arundanondchai’s mashup of family, church and dance videos did not really convince me. The involuntary actors in the documentary shots felt like hostages of his creative desires. But at least he made an effort with creating an all-encompassing exciting environment.
Kaari Upsons large scale sculptural installation featured some moving image works, and she managed to create an environment that really drew the spectator in. It was quite surrealist, dream-like, and not always pleasant, rather nightmarish, but it was hard to stop watching. She skillfully deployed the human reflex, also used so often in reality TV, where people get hooked by something that is both disgusting and attractive.
Stan Douglas’ works looked too much movie-ish (making use of Hollywood film language) to convince me to spend time watching the piece, and, given its location towards the end of my tour, I was just too tired too.
Christian Marclay’s collage of 48 war movies playing synchronously was just poor. Download war movies, cut and paste them on top of each other while decreasing the dimensions of each newly pasted movie. Hit render. Send to biennale curator.
My favorite was Haris Epaminonda’s Chimera. It visually showed something that cannot be completely expressed in words, and that, I think, is an achievement. It was modest, made from what appeared to be found footage, or self-shot archival 8mm footage. The work was able to, at least for me, recreate partially the feelings of the person shooting the video, and to evoke new kinds of emotions by the juxtapositions of a series of these shots. Probably also Kelly Jayne Jones, the author of the soundtrack should be mentioned, as she contributed to the overall impression left behind by the piece. By the way, I used a part of Chimera’s soundtrack (latter part) as the soundtrack for the video assemblage I made from the “Proposition B” exhibit.
Another favorite would be Jon Rafman’s Dream Journal 2018-2019, an incredible mashup of 3d-figures doing weird stuff in a good old surrealist sense, but infused with humorous pop-cultural references. The 3d animation was crude, without much effort on materials, light and shadow. But that did not take away any of the fun watching it, on the contrary, it perfectly fitted to what appeared to be a diary of sketches from the depths of the unconscious. (I used Rafman’s soundtrack from this piece as the soundtrack for the video assemblage of “Proposition A” impressions, see below).
East Europe works
East Europe was strongly underrepresented in the show. There was:
Andra Ursuta (born in Romania, living in the U.S.A.) with her anthropomorphic glass sculptures.
Augustas Serapinas (Lithuania) with his sculptural objects – watchtowers (that visitors were supposed to climb but were forbidden to climb by the exhibition organizer) and bricks from a nuclear plant rearranged by kids.
Maria Loboda (Poland, living in Germany) with her ironic “unfinished” sculptures.
Zhanna Kadyrova (Ukraine) with her recycled ceramic tile sculptures.
and… that was it.
Russia was ostensibly absent. If we compare that against the number of U.S. artists… I guess that this can be interpreted as a political statement by Ralph Rugoff, the U.S.-born curator, or more simply, attributed to the stereotypical U.S.-self-centeredness. But even without Russia, the representation was dire. After a period of interest, the art world seems to have moved on, and the “East” is once again a kind of swamp between the “West” and Russia. Most of the national pavilions from East Europe that I visited (see individual entries about Croatia, Bosna and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia) also conformed to their western stereotype, putting up presentations addressing the topics of post-communism and transformation. (Lithuania went against the trend here.) The refugee crisis has moved the focus to the Middle East and South (African continent), and this has been reflected in the artist selection representing these regions. Or it might have to do less with the refugees and more with the areas of geopolitical interest. It is ironic that this feeling of ignorance towards East Europe is shared between the “Westerners” and the refugees, who see Eastern Europe as a kind of transit zone towards the West, without paying much attention to it.
East Asia works
For East Asia the selection was more balanced, even though not that surprising:
Apichatpong Werasethakul (Thailand) is a well-known name, mostly as a film director.
Liu Wei (P.R.China) too. He had one of the last shows in Samsung’s Plateau Space before it closed.
Lee Bul (Korea) too, yet I do not know her work much. Unfortunately her contributions to the show did not make me know her better, they rather seemed like some of those “famous artist” gestures, cold, cryptic, inaccessible. My friend tried to decipher the work in “Proposition B”, noting that leebul means blanket in Korean (the exhibit featured a blanked covering a pile of something).
Suki Seokyeong Kang (Korea) is well known, at least to those who spent some time in South Korea. But her presentation was a bit pale compared to what I have seen in Korea previously – check blogs from Hite/Seoul, COS/Seoul, Ilmin/Seoul and Biennale/Gwangju.
Yin Xiuzhen (P.R.China) presented larger and smaller scale sculptures, all identifiable by the use of textile materials.
Nabuqi (P.R. China) presented two post-internet consumer landscapes abundant with plastic mass produced stuff but lacking in depth of meaning.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu (P.R. China) were spectacular as usual, present with works that were very fitting into the biennale atmosphere (large, simple, giving a strong impression).
Korakrit Arundanondchai (Thai) was already mentioned above.
Handiwirman Saputra (Indonesia) showed large-scale sculptures and paintings, abstract, clean and decorative. Very different than the Indonesian stereotype (that prevailed in the Indonesia pavilion for example).
Japan was represented by aforementioned Ryoji Ikeda, and by Mari Katayama, a young (1987) artist expressing her self-obsession through self-portraits documenting her unusual body.
Yu Ji (P.R. China) was probably the biggest surprise to me, because, despite her Chinese background (born and based in Shanghai), her works were not that large or noisy in attacking the senses, as it is the usual case with artists from that corner of the world who “make it” to a biennale outside of Asia. Her works (sculpture) express a very modest approach and care about human scale. One can sense that she does things as she feels them, within a scale that she can relate to. One can sense her personal touch in the works, that is, her hand has touched the materials on display and given shape to them. The “meaning” of the work is not easy to be verbalized, but a transmission of energies from person to person that takes place through the work and that makes it stand out.
More
I guess this is the right time to stop writing and start showing. I have assembled my impressions into to videos, one for “Proposition A” presented in the Arsenale Docks:
Artists featured in the video in order of appearance:
George Condo
Anthony Hernandez
Tavares Strachan
Ed Atkins
Gabriel Rico
Teresa Margolles
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Kemang Wa Lehulere
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Apichatpong Werasethakul and Tsuyoshi Hisakado
Darren Bader
Yin Xiuzhen
Nabuqi
Carol Bove
Suki Seokyeong Kang
Korakrit Arundanondchai and Alex Gvojic
Lee Bul
Kaari Upson
Hito Steyerl
Cameron Jamie
Christine and Margaret Wertheim
Michael Armitage
Julie Mehretu
Ulrike Müller
Yu Ji
Liu Wei
Alex Da Corte
Frida Orupabo
Jon Rafman
Avery Singer
Arthur Jafa
Ryoji Ikeda
Jesse Darling
Tarek Atoui
Jimmie Durham
Zhanna Kadyrova
Anicka Yi
Slavs and Tatars
And one for “Proposition B”, presented in the Giardini Central Pavilion:
Artists featured in the video in order of appearance:
Lara Favaretto
Antoine Catala
Haris Epaminonda
Jean-Luc Moulene
Cameron Jamie
Nicole Eisenman
Ulrike Müller
Kaari Upson
Jon Rafman
Ian Cheng
Henry Taylor
Julie Mehretu
George Condo
Nairy Baghramian
Lee Bul
Lara Favaretto
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
Christian Marclay
Yu Ji
Cyprien Gaillard
Liu Wei
Khyentse Norbu
Jesse Darling
Shilpa Gupta
Christine and Margaret Wertheim
Nabuqi
Hito Steyerl
Alex Da Corte
Yin Xiuzhen
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Joi Bittle
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Suki Seokyeong Kang
Anthony Hernandez
Anthea Hamilton
Stan Douglas
Gabriel Rico