|
|
| First impressions on the Venice Biennale 2011 | |
| Ghada Amer: What I liked the best was the American Pavilion. I was very surprised that for the first time they have openly criticized their own culture. It used to be about beauty or whatever, but this time it is about American politics and I was very impressed and happy to see that. The exhibition of Bice I found extremely cold, especially the one in Giardini. Stefan Banz: I’m very surprised by the work of Thomas Hirschhorn. For me it’s one of the highlights of the Biennale, and I’m also surprised because it really does not look like a Swiss contribution. It has strong content and it is strong visually, it’s something really very interesting; it’s more than interesting – it’s touching. I also liked the Austrian Pavilion with Markus Schinwald: this is a very quiet one, well realized, with lots of reflections, a conceptual work. And then in ILLUMInations I liked the work by Italian artist Luigi Ghiri: small, very beautiful photographs. Giovanni Bay: I had never seen so many people at a Biennale opening. I haven’t seen the pavilions of Japan, Germany and Great Britain, and I won’t see them because I can’t stand in line for two hours. Given that, I very much liked James Turrell at the Arsenale and Boltanski at the French Pavilion. My overriding impression is nothing exceptional. The exhibition by Pier Paolo Calzolari at Ca’ Pesaro, however, is most beautiful, as well as the installation of Prada. Cora von Zezschwitz: I just arrived this morning and from what I have seen I really appreciated the work of Melanie Smith at the Mexican Pavilion, because there were certain objet de curiositè that englobe the artist as she works, there are certain objects that are found objects and certain objects that are made objects – curiosities. And I think that it englobes the way how artists work, because they work sometimes with things that inspire them and they can make the meta objects of these things that surround us. I thought that it was very nicely done, and that it was an interesting way to show art nowadays. Patrick Gosatti: The overall impression I have is positive, as regards the Biennale itself. ILLUMInations is quite interesting, even if it is a bit linear and flat. I haven’t yet visited the International Pavilion here in the Giardini, however I like the one in the Arsenale. As regards the pavilions, there are always the highlights and then, on the other hand, the pavilions for passing through. Austria and England are among the highlights. I found Great Britain really impressive: you couldn’t recognise the pavilion any more. | |
 Christian Boltanski. The Wheel of Fortune. Part of installation 'Chance'. View of French exposition. 2011 | |
| Irène Hug: It’s difficult to say something in general. As a whole the art seems too feeble or tiring vis-à-vis the city of Venice, forever marvellous and enchanting. I wonder whether art really has become more boring or less surprising, or whether I have become more jaded with the passing of years. One very subjective impression was that many artists would seem to have a new message, but they wrap it in customary artistic vocabulary from which the viewers have to decipher the message all over again. Why build a labour-intensive installation such as the one in the British Pavilion? Why re-construct, like for like, an old Turkish house in order to obtain the effect of a chamber of horrors, with a photo of Atatürk that bears resemblance to Count Dracula? While in the Bangladesh Pavilion you can visit a genuine old house with a real workshop and real works of art? But the pavilion that I liked most of all by far was the Czech one, because it was very odd. You went into a kind of garden house; it smelt of an ancient art academy, there were old-fashioned sculptures and shelves around. On closer look you discover, for example, an unfinished sculpture resting on crutches with the neck wrapped in plastic and a head that is completely inadequate in relation to the rest of the body. In another place there is a woman searching for her dog under the table and, in order to do this, skims across the flat surface of the table with her arms. It’s about sculptures of the artist’s father, mixed up with different elements. This very ironic work highlights in a very intelligent manner the changing fashions of art. As far as the Polish Pavilion is concerned – extremely controversial – we are still in discussion… Sophie Usunier: I was extremely surprised by Boltanski, because I had expected something else, a sort of déjà vu, but instead I liked his installation a lot, it was full of humour. I also liked the work by Han Hoogerbrugge, his animation in the Danish Pavilion. Hirschhorn, the Swiss Pavilion, extremely powerful! He won because of his political engagement. Francesca Marianna Consonni: Usually I endure it all, my senses get massacred by the works, however this year I felt alright because I began to see artists dragging out of all this crisis some meaning which they reflected upon. Yesterday we visited Andorra, a very interesting pavilion. Spain at last has shed itself of the terrifying monument that is the aftermath of the idea of crisis, but it is a revolting cover-up, like putting powder over the scabs. Now instead we can see not only the scabs, but also the suggestions of healing. | |
 Jennifer Allora, Guillermo Calzadilla. Gloria. View of USA exposition. 2011 | |
| Pier Paolo Coro: I hope that this is the last time that the Italian Pavilion is left to politics. This business must stop. For me the most beautiful pavilion that I have seen is the Danish one, this year too they are the winners. They have made a work that speaks of the plurality in learning about art from various world perspectives and this is extremely beautiful. It really is the one and only illumin¬ating thing at this Biennale. The Spanish Pavilion is also beautiful, because you could say that these days the Italian Pavilion is in exile. Then there is the most powerful departure at the Arsenale with the work by Roman Ondak, it is extraordinary, but then little by little everything vanishes to nothing. Geoff Lowe: I think it’s probably the worst Biennale I’ve ever seen and it’s partly because you can’t concentrate on it. It’s very overwhelming, very hard to keep up with all the things that are going on, but also very interesting because it’s like the art is being deregulated. So it seems that it is more about side projects than official projects and it’s very hard to tell one from the other. In some ways this is interesting. Probably the most disturbing of all is the Italian Pavilion, where you’ve got this crazy thing. Two years ago it already seemed really bad, whereas the one this year is kind of unspeakable or one that leaves you speechless at the end of it. It’s impossible for us to understand how Dario Fo or Bernardo Bertolucci – people like this – would want to participate. It seems that the Biennale is traditionally about the unknown, or trying to work with the unknown: what they’ve done in this exhibition is to take what is already known into the space to flatten, to overtake, overwhelming everything else. It’s a kind of passion for ignorance, a form of destruction. Marco Meneguzzo: The fact that there are more countries than last time is a sign that effectively contemporary art has become a system for getting validated through international acceptance. Here we are in the Central Asian Pavilion and the artists of Central Asia, about whom we knew absolutely nothing, not even where to find them on the map, yet they have a language that is very similar, perhaps a bit more naive than that which we see at the Palazzo Grassi, for instance. This is of great significance; it indicates that there is a kind of koiné, a type of dialect which involves everyone to some extent. This dialect does not inspire differences, but rather approval. But there is a risk of a homogenization that is based on models that in reality are the dominant hegemonies. I always draw on the example of the Central Asia Pavilion: in reality everyone would like to be in the building next door, that is Palazzo Grassi. And so in some way they make their works according to that model. But this is not a problem of the Biennale, it’s a global problem, a consequence of globalization. | |
 Christoph Schlingensief. A Church of Fear of the Stranger in Me. View of German exposition. 2011 | |
| Giancarlo Norese: My impression is that I always miss something when I go to the Biennale. Sigrid Pawelke: We are still exploring the Biennale, this afternoon we were at the Mexican Pavilion – Melanie Smith, deconstruction of architecture. This is an almost utopian architecture in the jungle, designed throughout the 1970s and 80s and then eventually abandoned. But it’s a very cleverly done project about how to see and think of space, time, and the environment. Otherwise I have been very happy to assist at con¬ferences. There was a human rights activist from India, Dr Vandana Shiva, speaking. Unfortunately not a lot of people were present for such a major person. We also visited the Roma Pavilion hosted by UNESCO, and that was very important because here they questioned how to address con¬temporary issues in different ways. That for me has been the most striking part. Jacqueline Riva: What’s interesting this year is that there is so much to see. There is usually too much to see in the Biennale and we are used to that, so what we have created is the situation where we can walk into a pavilion, you walk in, you walk around and you recognize something, you get it quickly. So there are not really a lot of situations where you actually want to stay in the space, or maybe the environment is not created in the way that keeps you in the space. And I think that this is something that’s been lost perhaps in this Biennale. Then, of course, there are fantastic things to see: the Polish Pavilion, the German Pavilion with really interesting references to history, to Joseph Beuys, and Fluxus, and previous things. And I don’t know why in some ways there used to be a problem for some years that the art fairs were trying to be like biennales – now it’s like the Biennale is trying to be like an art fair. There is this funny kind of shift. | |
 Mike Nelson. I, Impostor. Installation. View of British exposition. 2011. Courtesy of British Council | |
| Dorothea Strauss: At the moment we are standing here at the Pavilion of Switzerland, represented by Thomas Hirschhorn. I like the pavilion of Thomas very much. Among other nice and interesting pavilions that I saw was the French Pavilion with Christian Boltanski – very interesting. And I saw a great video piece by the Finnish artist VesaPekka Rannikko in the Finnish Pavilion. The German Pavilion, too, is very interesting. Of course there is a complicated background to making an exhibition with Christoph Schlingensief now, but I think it’s a great opportunity to understand his work. Wawrzyniec Tokarski: Normally I perceive the Biennale as a Eurovision song contest, which for me is very political, where song is only a pretext. If, in the past years, to find artists like Liam Gillick representing Germany was something extraordinary, then now it seems to have become a normal occurrence. Una Szeemann: I found it to be a beautiful and interesting Biennale, however for me the passion was missing. And if we are talking of highlights, for me the Swiss Pavilion with Thomas Hirschhorn was absolutely among the best because it had everything in there, it had an incredible power. Now also we are in the Austrian Pavilion by Markus Schinwald, whom I’ve always liked and I am once again happy to see this beautiful work. Among the works in the exhibition curated by Bice I liked very much the photos by David Goldblatt: they were exceptional! Material prepared by Zane Oborenko and Barbara Fässler /Translated from Italian by Terēze Svilane/ | |
| go back | |
