Vice Versa Ups and Downs

I am not sure why the Italian pavilion should always be representing a collective show. An exhibition within an exhibition while other national pavilions do make a choice of 1 or 2 artists most of the time.
Bartolomeo Pietromarchi's Vice Versa is showing a messy approach by 14 artists (14!!!) in its 7 areas including 4 performing acts by Marcello Maloberti, Francesca Grilli, Fabio Mauri, Sislej Xhafa and 10 displays by Francesco Arena, Massimo Bartolini, Piero Golia, Giulio Paolini, Marco Tirelli, Luca Vitone, Gianfranco Baruchello, Flavio Favelli, Luigi Ghirri, Elisabetta Benassi.
All together covering from class 1924 to class 1968. More then 4 decades between Mauri and Baruchello and Grilli and Vitone. It seems to me that Pietromarchi was more anxious about making everybody happy then to realize a consistent contemporary exhibition. What's the meaning of all that?
Could he not chose a project? Does it always has to be a curatorial "statement" of some sort? Why can't we choose who is a great Italian artist here and now? Having said that there is obviously some very good artwork-Flavelli and Benassi in my opinion- and performances by Fabio Mauri (RIP) and Francesca Grilli while I couldn't really understand the overall meaning of such an effort. I really think it is a problem of "Format" where even interesting works (such as Golia's cement interactive piece) lose its energy. The good side of the story is that we made an enormous step forward after the disaster movie by Vittorio Sgarbi's edition where dignity was killed by ignorance, arrogance and stupidity.
After that ..It's like..a new start..hoping that the next edition will have a better use of the crowfunded 85000 euro budget.

A Time Machine installed at Fondazione Prada in Venice

The idea of "When Attitude becomes Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013" opens a very welcome debate on the meaning of Art Exhibitions there and then, now and yesterday. Germano Celant, Rem Koolhaas and Thomas Demand reinstall a 1969 seminal exhibition curated by Harald Szemann. This has been by far the best gift for art lovers such as me, born in 1971.

First of all I could breath the mood generated the revolutionary experiments in "1969 contemporary art". That would have been fair enough. A great retrospective. The amazing fact though is that I could see not only the artworks produced by artists such as Boetti, Beuys, Nauman, Mertz, Morris, Long, Lewitt, Anselmo in that very exciting time but that I could finally see by myself how the curator disposed it all: the materials, the conceptual issues, the identity, the thought on display. A time machine experience where all was re-created to give us an organic sensation of what it has been and what it might have been. How many other exhibition of the past deserve to be re-enacted? Possibly many. Surely few. Anything can happen now and maybe it would be fantastic if in 12 years time somebody will decide to re-propose 1997's Sensation where I could bring my son Edgar and explain how I felt then. It's about adventurous curatorial choices and the meaning of their complexities. It's like a never ending story where the past can be experienced in a timeloop sequence bringing it to a fast forward cycle of thought. Once again Fondazione Prada has proved to be essential to the art world dialectic. 

The Venice Pavilions I liked most part5 : CHILE

Venezia, Venezia is a 1:60 model of the 28 national pavilions at the giardini della biennale. The Chilena artist Alfredo Jaar makes al almost political statement reminding us on the importance of resistance.
I resist , ergo I am seems to be Jaar's motto as the idea culture itself suffer a inundation just to slowly reemerge in its struggling for survival. 24860 times the Biennal will be flooded and 24861 times it will reemerge, a symbol of the human resistance and capacity to rethink itself. the exhibition is completed by a 1946 picture of Lucio Fontana amongst the rubbles of the second world war. Once again Alfred Jaar's vision proves to be a spectacular projection of human hopes and desire to resist to negative forces.

The Venice Pavilions I liked most part4 : POLAND

Everything was forever until it was no more it is surely one of the most impressive sound sculptures I have ever witnessed. Aesthetically impeccable this monumental work by Konrad Smolensky brings to life a tentative tabula rasa. The artist built this sound machine in order to provoke some unstable emotions amongst visitors who are protected by useful ear plugs . The made in Poland 400 kilos bronze bells transmit the sound through the sound system, made of wonderfully crafted woofer sculpture and the effect is a mixture of anxiety and pleasure.  Konrad is an active member of the pinkpunk Polish scene:try it yourself!. His edgy, noisy (but how beautiful can noise be!), vibrating installations are combining postpunk ethics with minimalistic aesthetics. GOD SPEED (YOU)..

this photo courtesy of lele saveri

The Venice Pavilions I liked most part3 : UNITED KINGDOM

Jeremy Deller represented the British Pavilion with some English Magic. having lived 9 years in London I still find mysterious when exactly the British call themselves English and for what specific reason. At the football World Cup they participate with England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales while at the Olympics they simply are Great Britain. Here in Venice they are the United Kingsom but indeed they fell comfortable with such a title and such a show. The film is amazing with a Symphony played by the Melodians Steel Orchestra from South London re-interpreting anything including one of the best acid house tracks ever Voodoo Ray by A Guy Called Gerald. Also the visuals at the Pavilion are intended to speak loud about Deller Rave Culture. I was into that culture. I breathed every inch of those vibes and to be offered a thè by the British Council of Art in a rainy afternoon with some David Bowie/Riots pics + some (censored) Giant raptor made me feel at home, once again.
Bless this Acid House.

                              Edgar made his appearance at Venice 2013

The Venice Pavilions I liked most part2 : ROMANIA

The Rumenian pavilion is simply the most cost effective and exciting at Venice 2013. Curated by Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus it involves 5 performers busy filling our schedule with the outstanding "Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale"where the entire history of Biennale is represented in a random yet emotional narrative.
The Dance itself is gorgeous, the audience tension towards the artists and their act is phenomenal and the idea for such a show is pure genius. its like looking at your favorite music act with no barriers at all. It's like being on the stage for the first time. In fact there is "nothing" at the rectangular Pavilion. Nothing but those five performers and us looking at them. WOW.

The Venice Pavilions I liked most part1 : GREECE

Surfing through the National Pavilions in Venice has never been an easy exercise considering time constraints and socialite fatigues . We normally get to check the usual suspects and the ones we are somehow personally linked. Leaving aside the ViceVersa show @Padiglione Italia for which I will write my impressions elsewhere I try and attempt a hierarchy of my own:

1. Greece 2. Romania 3. UK 4. Poland 5. Chile.

History Zero

The argument at the Greek Pavilion " History Zero" by Stefanos Tsivopoulos is quite relevant for our contemporary crisis scenario and it is its relevance that made me think this is the most accomplished pavilion at Venice 2013.
Money is not the beginning or the end of all things. Society as such could survive by adopting other non monetary exchange systems. It did so it the past and so it might have to consider it an option for a brighter future. The exhibition central piece is a 3 plots video that poetically brings together an elderly and suffering woman whose hobby is to make origami money, an artist seeking inspiration for an artwork and an immigrant who is surviving by collecting scrap metal. The woman will throw her origami money in the rubbish that will be found by the wandering immigrant that will abandon his trolley full of metal which will be used by the artist as a real ready made. a circle of uplifting, endless possibilities are here on display. Tsivopoulos had also edited a fantastic book compendium where all the alternatives to money are mentioned. An excellent publication and not a bad sign for a country like Greece..

55th to Remember

The 55th Venice Biennale has been something of a reward for us art lovers. Massimiliano Gioni's approach has even surprised most of us with a challenging theme -The Encyclopedic Palace- and its impossible findings. The idea that total knowledge is the ultimate Nirvana has been haunting us for centuries and the not so shocking revelation is that we still have to consider it a as mission impossible.

Gioni's title " Everything in my mind" has resulted in a more unstable "where is my mind?" for what we have seen there in Venice. Or actually "where has my mind been"considering how Mr Sgarbi offended the whole planet with his "mercatino dell'arte di serie B" that seriously threatened our will to ever come back in Venice, to ever go to any art show ever. We thought that "Death In Venice" should have been rewritten there and then as what was killed was in fact the idea of quality and perseverance that a brilliant director or even honest curator should consider before engaging in such an exercise.

Anyway-going back to 2013-Gioni's exhibit might have seemed to some critics as an academic performance, an educational debrief maybe an historical exhibit with a pedantic flair but surely a wakeup call for those who think that contemporary arts are only here and now. It is true that a high % of Gioni's participants are actually dead and buried but so it is not for their images, obscure objects and enchanting vibes on show.
I was particularly happy to have found there at the center stage the prints of Jung's Liber Novus having highlighted not so recently on this very blog its importance for the worlds of arts as a whole.
I was even more satisfied to have found so many unexpected artworks some of which I have truly adored. I am not trying a list of the best here but I can't avoid to state that the Augustin Lesage 1920's compositions and 1930's Crowley and Harris watercolors can help define that very age with a different light, just to make an example.

Another protagonist of the 55th has surely been Cindy Sherman who curated part of The Arsenale Exhibit. To keep the loop with Gioni's choice Sherman selected about 30 artists and their 200 works.
Bodies, Faces, Idols, Masks, Puppets, Offerings: everything is true and nothing is mortal. Sherman outclassed any attempt to judge her work as purely "aesthetics". Here we have a statement of pure class, indeed.

The Arsenal Exhibit is dense, contemporary, courageous and.. well executed (again, bringing back to life the Venice Biennal and what could have been a corpse, namely the 54th edition). Il Palazzo Enciclopedico is a place to remember. It is where I want to go next. To search and discover. To feel at ease with supernatural cosmogonies. It is where you can confront a vision. This is not the venue where to find the collective wisdom but it is an interesting pitstop where to look for that part of the "whole"which might be shaping itself right now and tomorrow somewhere maybe within the electronic clouds of knowledge. After all "Contemporary" Civilization has yet to be started and looking back at some "old" inventories might help. Thanks a lot for that.