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.
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.
