Padiglione Olanda - Mark Manders "Room with Broken Sentence"

Comunicato stampa dal sito http://www.venicebiennale.nl/

Mark Manders

Room with Broken Sentence

Dutch entry 55th Venice Biennale

Curated by Lorenzo Benedetti

Commissioner: Mondriaan Fund

1 June - 24 November 2013

The pavilion is » open! 

Mark Manders (1968) is representing the Netherlands at the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia. The Dutch pavilion showcases Room with Broken Sentence, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti (1972). The exhibition covers a 23 year span of Manders’ activity, combining existing installations with a monumental 4 meter high monumental new work. 

The larger installations developed specially for the Rietveld pavilion reveal significant new aspects of the artist’s vocabulary. Turning his back on the frenetic consumerist dynamics of today’s cultural system, Manders withdraws into sculptures that seem to have always been there. All works combine a certain mystery with tremendous visual appeal. Manders’ use of materials, in which nothing is what it seems (epoxy looks like clay, clay becomes bronze and bronze seems to be wood), enhances this enigmatic visual impact. Leaving the shelter of the ‘white cube’, it infiltrates, blends into and seeks acknowledgement within a reality close to that of the general public. In an interview Manders stated: 

“I don't often show my work in the public domain, rather in museums where people choose to go to see art. But since 1991 I always test a work that I've just finished in a supermarket. I just imagine a new work there and I check if it can survive where it doesn't have the label of an artwork. It is just a thing that someone placed in a supermarket. Now I am sure that all of my works can stand in that environment”. 

There is a satellite exhibition in a Venetian supermarket proving this aspect of his work.

2013 is a special year for the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale, as it celebrates both a 100th and a 60th anniversary. The Netherlands may have been present since the start of the Biennale, but only from 1913 onwards in their own exhibition space and since 1953 in the present pavilion designed by the great Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. The selection of Mark Manders places him in direct confrontation with Rietveld, whose Modernist pavilion is one of the architectural jewels of the Giardini of the Biennale. The result will be a dialogue between a Modernist architect and an artist who, a child of his time, sets out to decipher the enigmatic temporal dimension of our age and create a parallel, autonomous one of his own. 

The Dutch entry at the 55th International Art Exhibition is a solo exhibition by one of the Netherlands’ most representative contemporary artists. Mark Manders launched his career in 1986 with a work entitled Self-Portrait as a Building: a floor plan of a building realised with pencils, pens and other writing implements. From this point onwards his art has revolved around the exploration of this inner building. 

The Mondriaan Fund has been responsible for the Dutch presence at the Venice Biennale since 1996. This year the entry was determined through a » juriedopen call; 82 proposals were submitted from which the Manders & Benedetti plan was selected. 

National Pavilion of Kuwait at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia

The National Council of Culture, Arts, and Letters presents Kuwait’s first Pavilion at the55. International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Under the general theme of“The Encyclopedic Palace”, proposed by Massimiliano Gioni director of this edition, the exhibition National Works explores two major works by sculptor Sami Mohammad (b. 1943) along with a new photographic production by Tarek Al-Ghoussein (b. 1962). Curated by Ala Younis, National Works disassembles symbols of grandeur in paused/post glorious times, in an attempt to re-interpret Kuwait’s modernization project.

 (fonte http://www.artkuwait.org/)

Title of the exhibition: National Works

Exhibitors: Sami Mohammad, Tarek Al-Ghoussein

Commissioner: Mohammed Al-Asoussi (National Council of Culture, Arts, and Letters)

Curator: Ala Younis

Venue: Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà, Cannaregio 4391/A / Strada Nova

Opening reception: 30 May 2013 at 6 pm

Dates: open during the preview days (29, 30 and 31st) and for the public from 1 June – 24 November 2013

Romanian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia Giardini della Biennale

“Solid things can be nomadic but never movement.” (Mykki Blanco)

An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale takes the entire history of the Venice Biennale and reflects it in a national pavilion as in a fragment of a mirror. The retrospective can be seen as an ephemeral monument to the biennale, a critique of its Euro-centrism, vain display of power and luxury or of mere conservatism but also a celebration of its openness for experiments, for the coexistence of virtually all the trends, media, genres, that art uses or represents. Yet, it is also something more.

By turning the monumental into the immaterial and the object into action, by enacting history, the project also transforms this history; it actualizes it. It is a simultaneous affirmation and undoing, an attempt to archive which is at the same time turned against the weight of the archive, of the storage, of the labels and keys of reading that come with it. The work is appealing to the public’s memory only to reveal its constructed nature and to question how memories are selected, who is reminding us what and by which means.

A retrospective is generally a grandiose and thorough enterprise. In this case, however, by reproducing a variety of works with the means of only a few human bodies, the work changes the scale of what a retrospective can be and implicitly of the biennial itself. It hints at its vastness but it makes it accessible. The bodies of the performers are there present, alive, in tension, contradiction or dependence to one another, exposed to the public.

Throughout this year’s Venice biennale, during its opening hours, the performers in the Romanian pavilion are recreating their version of a world’s exposition, one hundred years of history in a day, every day.

Alexandra Pirici, born in 1982, lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. Alexandra has a background in choreography and performing arts but attempts to work undisciplined, across different mediums, including film and music. Her work has been presented at, among others: Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; Tanzquartier Vienna; Kanuti Gilde Saal, Talinn; Nottdance Festival, UK; Kunstmule, Germany; Salonul de Proiecte/ MNAC Anexa, Bucharest; Temps d’Images international festival, and the Balkan Dance Platform.

Manuel Pelmuş is one of the most well-known representatives of Romanian dance in the international context. He works in Bucharest and Oslo. His performances have been extensively presented throughout Europe and the United States. In 2011 he founded Căminul Cultural in Bucharest, together with Brynjar Abel Bandlien and Farid Fairuz. Manuel Pelmuş was awarded Berlin Art Prize for Performing Arts in 2012 by the Akademie der Künste Berlin.

Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuş

An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale

1 June–24 November 2013

Opening: 29 May 2013, 4:15pm

Professional preview: 29–31 May 2013

Curator: Raluca Voinea

Project manager: Corina Bucea

Graphic design: Nona Inescu

Commissioner: Monica Morariu

Deputy Commissioner: Alexandru Damian

"Solid things can be nomadic but never movement." (Mykki Blanco)

http://ro.tranzit.org/en

Alexandra Pirici, "If You Don't Want Us, We Want You", 2011. Intervention in public space, Bucharest. Courtesy of the artist.