Padiglione Austria

BRIGITTE KOWANZ ERWIN WURM

IN THE AUSTRIAN PAVILION AT THE

57th INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2017

9 February 2017. Christa Steinle, Commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion in 2017, is presenting Brigitte Kowanz and Erwin Wurm, two artistic positions who focus on examining and refining the concept of sculpture in the international art discourse.

With their oeuvres, Brigitte Kowanz and Erwin Wurm – who have both received the Grand Austrian State Prize for their extraordinary work – operate at the intersection between sculpture and architecture. Both react to changes in our perception and experience of space brought about over the past two hundred years by machines, media and new materials.

“Although the most famous phase of Wurm’s work is known as performative sculpture and Brigitte Kowanz’s works as light installations, thus causing them to appear to be worlds apart in terms of designation, they nevertheless work in the same sphere, i.e. on the expansion of the arts ushered in by the rejection of the image. Through the aid of her light installations, Brigitte Kowanz has immaterially redefined space and architecture. With his famous house paraphrases, from ‘House Attack’ (2006) to ‘Narrow House’ (2010), Erwin Wurm has transformed architecture into sculpture, consistently evolving the performative turn of sculpture with his ‘One Minute Sculptures’. Kowanz’s light objects and light spaces with their inherent writing and signs constitute an autonomous achievement for art. With their innovative and independent contributions, Kowanz and Wurm form part of an international movement within the spectrum of an extended concept of sculpture and

space”, as Christa Steinle comments on her aesthetic concept for the Austrian pavilion.

RELATIONS BETWEEN LIGHT, LANGUAGE AND REFLECTION

Brigitte Kowanz’s position in recent art history is a distinctive one. Since the 1980s, her work

has centred on light as an artistic medium that she investigates in relation to space and in

combination with signs, codes and language. She uses light as a means of transcending and adding precision in order to question the conventional concept of image and painting and to hone a new, integrated relation between work, space and viewer. In doing so, carrying on the tradition of reflection on the media, she concentrates on dealing with the fundamental parameters of art: visibility, perception and the production of meaning. Light makes everything visible, but remains invisible itself. Light determines places, but knows no place itself. In “Light Never Stays / Knows No Place / Is Continually Changing / With Its Environment“ (2003/2005), for example, Kowanz explores the unfathomable and ephemeral with analytical passion. Light defies capture, light is in motion, light is everywhere.

The result is conceptual, but poetic objects and installations emerge, in which she also investigates the mechanisms of language. This mutual mirroring of light and language is often accompanied by actual mirrors, that cause reality and virtual mirror image to pervade each other in her exhibition enactments, blurring the boundaries between artwork and viewer.

In her space-forming mirror installations (e.g. MUMOK Vienna 2010), she thus breaks open the boundaries of three-dimensional, architectural space, adding virtual spaces to it.

Kowanz deploys mirrors as a kind of metamedium of visual transfer: by penetrating real space and virtual space, mirrors contain an infinite number of images, transcending and dematerialising the boundaries of space.

Light, language and mirrors constitute the trinity of themes that, combined with each other,

effectively multiply the possibilities of transcending one’s own bounds and mutual penetration to the point of infinity. In these virtual spaces, Kowanz also confronts the viewer with current socio-political issues. In one of her latest pieces, “Maastricht 07.02.92 01.11.93“ (2016), she formulates her concern about the breakdown of the European Union. In this case, the mirror serves, quite literally, as a medium of reflection in which viewers find themselves.

Brigitte Kowanz’s art is conceptual poetry. To her, light as the origin of all life is information, the shaping of space-time.

SCULPTURE AS AN OPEN FIELD OF ACTION

With his sculptures, Erwin Wurm makes a globally acknowledged autonomous contribution to an international trend: sculpture as a form of action. To begin with, Erwin Wurm reinterprets the classical criteria of sculpture – volume, weight, stasis, gravity, form and mass. Instead of the threedimensional object on a plinth, Erwin Wurm focuses on the human being himself and his actions with everyday objects in unusual positions, capturing this minimal period of time in photographs.

Photography and video become a medium of sculpture. With these famous One Minute Sculptures, the audience become participants in designing the sculpture and the sculpture becomes an open field of action. Taking a further step, Erwin Wurm offers the audience various instructions for making sculptures in the museum space, subversively encouraging the individual to take part in social action. By consistently expanding the concept of sculpture, Erwin Wurm demonstrates that he can find an answer to the moods and social conditions of our time in an intrinsically artistic manner – sometimes sublime, often philosophical – in images and objects. Wurm’s concept of sculpture, that

revolves around a wide range of materials and media, makes explicit reference to the traditions of the “Neo-Avantgarde”, in which provocation and venture always played a role.

In other distinct bodies of work, we see the insights gained from the action sculptures transferred back to static objects. One example is “Narrow House“ (2010), an intervention in public space that was on show at the Biennale di Venezia in 2011, a work with which Erwin Wurm spectacularly sums up the confinement of the petit bourgeois family. Here again, Erwin Wurm uses his largeformat sculptures in public space to pan out new options in the aesthetic examination of sculpture and architecture.

All of his works refer to a critical, media-analytical consideration of the concept of sculpture by transcending the boundaries between object and performance, sculpture and photography, between artist and audience. Hence, his works also offer a wide basis for reflection on sociocultural and socially relevant questions. Where once sculpture was above all stasis, since the advent of kinetics it is dynamics. As “social sculpture” (J. Beuys), sculpture is equally action. Wurm turns sculpture into the audience’s form of action.

Christa Steinle has contributed significantly to and enriched national and international

developments in contemporary art through her activities as Director of the Neue Galerie in Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum or as Austrian Commissioner of the Cairo Biennale in 2004, among others. She has been consistently committed to promoting young artists, critically examining artistic patterns of thought and the art industry.

AUSTRIAN PAVILION, LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2017

Commissioner Christa Steinle

Artists Brigitte Kowanz Erwin Wurm

Padiglione Australia

In 2017, Australia will be represented by Tracey Moffatt at the Venice Biennale. Tracey’s exhibition MY HORIZON, will comprise all new work including large-scale photography and film. Tracey is one of Australia’s most successful artists and creates highly stylized narratives and montages to explore a range of themes. These themes include the complexities of interpersonal relationships, the curiousness of popular culture, and her own deeply felt childhood memories and fantasies. 

Tracey will be working alongside internationally renowned Curator, Natalie King. Aside from curating the exhibition, Natalie will edit the accompanying publication of the same name, to be published by Thames & Hudson. This will be the first time an artist representing Australia at the Venice Biennale will have a globally distributed accompanying publication.

Australia’s commissioner of the 2017 Venice Biennale is business leader and entrepreneur, Naomi Milgrom, AO.

Australia’s representation at the Venice Biennale began in 1954, and since then 38 distinguished contemporary visual artists have exhibited under the Australia banner. Click here to see all the Australian representations at the Venice Biennale.

This will be the second exhibition in the award-winning Australian Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini. 

With just over six weeks until the official launch of the 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the Australia Council for the Arts has revealed the photograph ‘Hell’ - one of the extraordinary works that will feature in Tracey Moffatt’s exhibition MY HORIZON at the Australian Pavilion in Venice.

This exhibition of entirely new work will be officially launched in the second week of May 2017 in Venice. It features two major large-scale photographic series and two video works. The exhibition explores journeys – both legal and illegal – and alludes to issues of race and gender, sexuality, desire, identity, and human connection and estrangement.

‘Hell’, the work revealed by Moffatt at her Sydney studio today, is one of 12 large scale photographs from the series Passage which is set in a mysterious dockland. A mother, a motorcycle police officer and a sharply dressed character whom the artist calls ‘the middleman’ enact a drama that is, as Moffatt says, as “old as time itself. People throughout history and across cultures have always escaped across borders to seek new lives.”

On MY HORIZON, Moffatt said:

“I have taken my camera into unknown locations and created photodramas, using models, actors and people I find on the street. My stories meld fiction, fact and some aspects of my family history but I have wanted to extend my filmic narratives into imaginary realms. The horizon line encapsulated in the title MY HORIZON can represent a yearning for escape to another place.”

Commissioner for Australia, Naomi Milgrom AO said:

“It is a special moment in our history, to have Tracey Moffatt’s work represent Australia at this most prestigious international art event. Tracey has forged an extensive, celebrated international career with her meticulously constructed narratives exploring race, gender, sexuality and displacement. Using a language rich with cinematic history and deeply poetic imagery, MY HORIZON deals with many of the issues that occupy our minds today.”

Curator Natalie King said:

“MY HORIZON is capacious, open, expansive and personal – an exhibition that references film, art and the epic history of photography, as well as aspects of her family history.”

Through photography and film, Tracey Moffatt creates highly stylised narratives and montage. She first received critical acclaim with the short film Night Cries which was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, bedevil, was also selected for Cannes in 1993, and in 1997 she was invited to exhibit in the Aperto section of the Venice  Biennale. An exhibition at the Dia Centre for the Arts in New York followed, consolidating her international reputation.

Since then Moffatt has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries across the globe, with more than 100 international exhibitions including a highly prestigious 2012 solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a major new book co-published by Thames and Hudson and the Australia Council, and edited by Natalie King. ‘Hell’ is the cover image for this definitive survey of MY HORIZON, which features contributions from a range of Australian and international writers and academics. Major essays from Alexis Wright, Djon Mundine OAM and Natalie King respond in powerful ways to MY HORIZON both as an entire exhibition and individual works. The book also charts Tracey Moffatt’s personal inspirations for this new series of work.

Australia Council Chair Rupert Myer AO said that this glimpse into Tracey’s evocative new work confirms why MY HORIZON is such a highly anticipated exhibition.

“This wonderful event has had a profound impact on Australia’s international arts profile through the decades of artists who have come before. Tracey is an extraordinary artist who will richly add to the artistic and cultural legacy of Australia in Venice,” Mr Myer said.

“I would like to thank Naomi, Natalie, Tracey and the Australia Council’s Venice team for their dedication and significant efforts to reach today’s milestone, and wish them well as we approach the opening of MY HORIZON in May.”

Established in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the world’s oldest and most prestigious biennale of international contemporary art. Unique for its dual exhibition model, the Venice Biennale comprises of a curated show and individual exhibitions of ‘national participations’. It is an important platform for countries to affirm their nation’s artistic and cultural identity.

The Australia Council has been proud to support and manage the Australian representation at the Venice Biennale since 1978, leveraging and positioning Australia as a key player in the visual arts internationally. Australia’s representation at the Venice Biennale began in 1954, and since then 38 distinguished contemporary visual artists have exhibited under the Australia

banner with the support of the Australian Council. Past Australian representation has included Fiona Hall (2015), Patricia Piccinini (2003), Bill Henson (1995), Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls (1990), Sir Arthur Streeton and Arthur Boyd AC OBE (1958).

Padiglione Francia

It is with the ‘‘Merzbau musical’’ project that Xavier Veilhan will represent France for the 57th International Art Biennale of Venice in 2017.

This installation, with the two curators, Lionel Bovier and Christian Marclay, will make a play on volume and decor in the French Pavilion, inspired by the world of the recording studio. Visitors will be able to discover exceptional musical instruments, some of which will be created for the occasion, and listen to musicians from all horizons, throughout the Venice Biennale.

 

Born in 1963, Xavier Veilhan lives and works in Paris. His work, involving sculpture, painting, video, photography and installation, consists in taking hold of what is real, particularly in its biological and technical aspects, in archetypical, generic or prototypical forms, that question the worlds of historic and contemporary representation.

 

Xavier Veilhan has made a host of personal exhibits, at the Modern Art Museum in Paris (1993), CCC in Tours (1995), Consortium in Dijon (1999), Mamco in Geneva (1999-2000), Magasin in Grenoble (2000), CCA Kitakyushu (2002), Pompidou Center in Paris (2004), Modern and Contemporary Art Museum in Strasbourg (2005), Château de Versailles (2009), etc.

Starting in 2012, he developed Architectones, a series of art interventions in seven major modern buildings. In 2014, he took interest in the architecture on a new scale by designing the Château de Rentilly.

In 2015, he directed two films that extend his special explorations: Vent Moderne (La Villette) andMatching Numbers (3e Scène, Paris National Opera). The same year, dual shows (Galerie Perrotin, New York and Paris) pay a tribute to producers that shape the sound of our era. Hence, the genesis of this ‘‘Merzbau Musical’’ and the collaborative work envisaged for the Pavilion.

Padiglione Gran Bretagna

Phyllida Barlow has been selected to represent Britain at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and she presents a major solo show in the British Pavilion. 

Best known for her colossal sculptural projects, for over four decades Phyllida Barlow has employed a distinctive vocabulary of inexpensive materials such as plywood, cardboard, plaster, cement, fabric and paint to create striking sculptures and bold and expansive installations that confront the relationship between objects and the space that surrounds them. Drawing on memories of familiar objects from her surroundings, Barlow’s practice is grounded in an anti-monumental tradition characterised by her physical experience of handling materials in an expedient and direct way.

“It is an extraordinary privilege and honour to be invited to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale 2017. I am astonished, thrilled and, of course, hugely excited... The international diversity for which the Biennale is so renowned within the particular context of Venice is a unique and stimulating creative opportunity beyond my wildest dreams." 

Phyllida Barlow 

The Commissioner of the British Pavilion is Emma Dexter, Director Visual Arts, British Council. The exhibition is commissioned by the British Council for the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2017 and has been made possible with support from Hauser & Wirth.

Padiglione Canada

The National Gallery of Canada is very proud to organize, with Kitty Scott, Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Pavilion presentation of work by artist Geoffrey Farmer at La Biennale di Venezia 2017 – 57thInternational Art Exhibition, in Venice, Italy.

More than a hundred and twenty years after its founding, the Venice Biennale continues to captivate the art world every two years with the spectacle of a truly global survey of the very best of contemporary art.

In 2017 the Biennale will include representation from more than eighty invited nations, all showcasing their leading artists in national pavilions and exposition spaces. The prestigious Golden and Silver Lions, among the most coveted visual arts prizes in the world, will be awarded during the exhibition.

Padiglione Russo

Theatrum Orbis, a new exhibition conceived and created for the Russian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, features artists Grisha Bruskin, Recycle Group and Sasha Pirogova alongside contemporary Russian composers.

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The exhibition title – translated as ‘Theatre of the World’ - takes its name from Abraham Ortelius’ atlas published in Antwerp in 1570. Marking an epoch in the history of cartography, it was the first modern atlas to unite knowledge and experience across science and culture accumulated during the Age of Discovery.

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Theatrical in its concept and form, the exhibition includes sculpture, installation, video and sound across three emotively connected parts. Visitors follow a narrative throughout the pavilion, first encountering Bruskin’s installation of figurative white sculptures; then, on descending the stairs and passing through a labyrinth, further rooms contain works by Recycle Group and Pirogova. While Bruskin represents a long-established generation of Russian artists, Recycle Group and Pirogova come from a new post-digital era engaged with technology.

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Music and sound plays a very important role in the exhibition, with specially written scores by Dimitri Kourdlianski, Peter Aidu and Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro. For the first time sound is not constrained by the walls of the pavilion, but is taken out into the Giardini, establishing a dialogue with the viewer through Dmitri Kourliandski’s sound performance “Commedia delle arti”.

Padiglione Giappone

Takahiro Iwasaki was born in the Hiroshima Prefecture where he is also currently based. This solo exhibition presents a selection of three-dimensional works created using everyday familiar objects including towels, books, and plastic rubbish. Characteristic of Iwasaki’s works is his fine handiwork by which he transforms his materials, such as creating steel towers from the threads pulled out of towels and construction cranes from bookmark strings attached to books. His use of these everyday objects draw influence from the numerous artifacts housed in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, conveying the instant changes in the forms of daily necessities as a consequence of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, his use of “figurative representation” can not only be described as a traditionally “Japanese” technique, but is a conscious decision that is based on the significant turnabout in Hiroshima’s position before and after the war, from a military city into a city of peace. Iwasaki’s method of making small interventions to have a remarkable impact on a large scale is that which also relates to Hiroshima’s experience of the atomic bomb, and how the power of microscopic atoms had resulted in the annihilation of the city.

For his works Iwasaki has selected motifs of both old and new buildings in the coastal regions of Japan, including a traditional shrine built above the sea, chemical plants that stand along Hiroshima’s coast, as well as oilrigs. Reflection Model (Ship of Theseus) is a new work based on the motif of a shrine reflecting on the surface of water, however since the reflected image is conveyed without fluctuation, it appears as an unrealistic representation that captures a fleeting and stationary moment in time and space. The fact that the shrine is depicted in its broken state after the typhoon is a conscious decision on Iwasaki’s part, who focuses on how its structure is made to protect its important areas by enabling sections of it to be intentionally destroyed when inflicted with external force, thus eluding any substantial damage. This method of elusion by accepting the circumstances presented is one that can be said to illustrate the Japanese way of confronting nature.

From issues of nuclear energy and the development of resources, to chemical plants that despite supporting the high growth of the postwar economy had been a serious cause for pollution, Iwasaki’s works shed light on the various challenges and situations confronted by Japan’s rural regions, and through them present an image of Japan from a different and distinguished perspective. The exhibition’s title, “Turned Upside Down, It’s a Forest” is in reference to a text written by Venetian novelist Tiziano Scarpa, describing how the city of Venice is built on an infinite number of stakes driven into the lagoon. The exhibition communicates the importance of changing one’s perspective, and invites the viewers to embrace different ways of looking.

Meruro Washida (Curator)

Padiglione Svizzera

La 57. Mostra internazionale d’arte – la Biennale di Venezia si svolgerà dal 13 maggio al 26 novembre 2017 (vernice per la stampa: 10, 11 e 12 maggio 2017) ai Giardini, all’Arsenale così come in vari luoghi della città. La mostra principale «VIVA ARTE VIVA» è curata da Christine Macel.

Padiglione svizzero

La Fondazione svizzera per la cultura Pro Helvetia ha nominato il curatore Philipp Kaiser per il Padiglione svizzero nel 2017. Per la mostra «Women of Venice» vengono esposte opere inedite, realizzate appositamente per la Biennale di Venezia, di Carol Bove e Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.

Salon Suisse

Diretto dalla curatrice Koyo Kouoh, il «Salon Suisse» 2017 presenta ATARAXIA, il programma di dibattiti ed eventi che avrà luogo parallelamente all’esposizione allestita nel Padiglione svizzero. Quale partner del «Salon Suisse», la società LAUFEN Bathrooms AG patrocina le manifestazioni a Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi.

Padiglione Ungheria

Peace on Earth!
57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Hungarian Pavilion
Giardini
13 May – 26 November, 2017

National Commissioner: Julia Fabényi
Curator: Zsolt Petrányi
Organizer: Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest

We are all concerned about what the future holds for our world. No matter to what extent we believe in the traditional values of Western society, some present-day events seem to question basic principles that were believed to be unchangeable until recently. In a world full of conflicts, world peace seems to be more and more utopian and unachievable; yet, from a historical perspective, we are, in fact, living in the most peaceful period of mankind. Gyula Várnai’s project Peace on Earth! is based on the concept that our faith in the future is relative; its starting point is that the directions we can see now pointing forward in time are determined by the devices, knowledges, and ideologies used today. However, just as it is shown by the example of the now empty slogan used by the Socialist regime in the Cold War period, the validity of these ideas changes with time. Through his installations, Gyula Várnai’s exhibition evokes the ideas of the futurology and the utopias of the past and confronts them with the challenges of the present. His sources are found material and visual elements, which he puts into new contexts in order to shed light on the fact that our vision of the future is the foundation of all the discourses of economics and power, no matter in which era we live in. Furthermore, his works raise the question: what role do remembering and nostalgia play in shaping the following generations’ image of the world? The lessons and emblems of the past determine the times to come, the source of the future is the past, yet, the direction of the changes is unpredictable. Though science, art, and futurology are all concerned with outlining some possibilities, the key to live the present can be to understand the differences between concept, desire, interests, and reality. Várnai, by referring to the past and to the imagined future embedded in it, makes us realize that the movement of the changes is a matter of unpredictably emerging principles. The twenty-first century can bring about paradigmatic changes, technological and historical turns, still, it seems that it is just the desires uttered in the visions of the past that appear in new reincarnations. Zsolt Petrányi, curator

 

Padiglione Finlandia

Artists Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen will present their first collaboration, The Aalto Natives, in the Finnish Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Opening on 13 May, the exhibition is the flagship contemporary art event included in Finland’s official centenary programme. Its patron is Mrs Jenni Haukio, the spouse of the President of Finland.   

The Aalto Natives explores national identity

Individually known for their irreverent and often comedic story-driven work, in which a humorous approach deceivingly belies a profound inquiry into contemporary issues of morality and power, Mellors and Nissinen will focus on various clichés surrounding Finnish history and national identity in The Aalto Natives.

The installation will be conceived for the architectural and ideological context of the Finnish Pavilion, designed by architect Alvar Aalto in 1956. Conflating ideas and tropes from archaeology, anthropology and science fiction, it will re-imagine Finnish society.

“The Aalto Natives explores themes such as the invention of national identity and the origins of culture by way of absurdist satire. Dressing its intellectual ambitions in purposefully silly gear, it both addresses the complex challenges our globalized world faces today, and pokes a cheeky kind of fun at the political correctness of its discourse,” says curator Xander Karskens.

In The Aalto Natives, the artists, who share an interest in the capacity of absurdism and transgression to critique power structures and the status quo, bring together Nissinen’s intuitive, do-it-yourself attitude to image production and his penchant for naïve musicality, with Mellors’ writing-based approach to filmmaking, and integration of sculpture.

“We wanted to take a cosmic perspective on nationalism — a comic-cosmic perspective on national identity, creation mythology, transnational movement, bureaucracy and class & racial stereotyping. We started with the idea of creation mythology – it seemed both absurd and necessary. We took a trip to the Ateneum in Helsinki, looked at  the Kalevala paintings and talked about the role of the egg-laying duck. We realized that Finland is part of a broader genus of egg-based civilizations,” say the artists.

The 57th Venice Biennale opens on 13 May

The Venice Biennale, located in the Giardini and Arsenale directly in the historic centre of Venice, will open to the public on 13 May. The Art Biennale, which rotates with the Architecture Biennale every other year, is expected to attract approximately half a million visitors. Along with the national exhibitions, the Biennale hosts a large main exhibition of 120 artists in the Italian Pavilion. This year the main exhibition Viva Arte Viva is curated by Christine Macel, Chief Curator of Centre Pompidou in Paris.

“The Venice Biennale is the oldest and one of the most prestigious international exhibitions of contemporary art, which always manages to capture the zeitgeist of the world in a magical way. The Aalto Natives exhibition is by far the most international production we have ever seen in the Finnish Pavilion. With their very special take on the global state of affairs, Erkka Nissinen and Nathaniel Mellors will provide us with a viewpoint like no other,” says Raija Koli, Director of Frame and the commissioner of the exhibition.

The Aalto Natives to be exhibited at the Cobra Museum and Kiasma after Venice

The Aalto Natives installation will be seen both in the Netherlands and Finland right after  the Biennale ends in November. In addition to being presented at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen in the Netherlands in December 2017, The Aalto Natives will be included as part of a major exhibition featuring Erkka Nissinen and Nathaniel Mellors at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki in spring 2018.

Padiglione Cina

 

La 57. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia aprirà al pubblico da sabato 13 maggio a domenica 26 novembre 2017. Il tema scelto per questa edizione della Biennale Arte èViva Arte Viva, immaginando una mostra fatta dagli artisti, con gli artisti e per gli artisti. Il progetto espositivo pone gli artefici della creazione in prima linea, garantendo loro l’opportunità di esprimersi in totale libertà. Il Padiglione Cina accoglie l’invito e presenta un progetto espositivo curato da un artista per gli artisti, dal titolo Continuum – Generation by Generation. La mostra propone una riflessione incentrata sul concetto di ‘eternità’: ponendo in dialogo arte contemporanea e arte vernacolare, offre una chiave di lettura del misterioso protrarsi della tradizione cinese nella produzione artistica, nel corso dei secoli.

 

Qiu Zhijie, artista universalmente apprezzato per la grande versatilità espressiva e la molteplicità di interessi che lo caratterizzano, è stato chiamato a curare questa esposizione. La missione che il Padiglione Cinese si pone è quella di catturare l’energia del continuum - o del “Bu Xi” così come definito nella cultura cinese - al fine di ritrovare nella vitalità che caratterizza il fare arte ai nostri giorni quel valore di rigenerazione narrato dai testi antichi, registrando le trasformazioni e il rinnovamento nelle arti applicate tradizionali.

 

Le immagini antitetiche ‘montagna/mare’ e ‘antico/nuovo’, che nel loro insieme rappresentano l’equilibrio perfetto dello ‘Yin/Yang’ cinesi, costituiscono la cornice entro la quale di sviluppa il percorso espositivo. Due favole cinesi molto note, Il vecchio sciocco che rimuove le montagne eJingwei che riempie il mare, saranno il serbatoio immaginifico da cui ricavare visioni corrispondenti ai concetti di ‘montagna’ e ‘mare’.

Due opere emblematiche del periodo della Dinastia Song (X – XI Sec.): Skeleton Fantasy Show di Li Song e Dodici immagini dell’acqua che cresce di Ma Yuan sono state scelte per introdurre il pubblico alla mostra in quanto entrambe riferite agli aspetti più importanti dell’universo spirituale cinese: la visione della vita, della morte e del tempo, che insieme definiscono il concetto di “Bu Xi.”

 

Due artisti tradizionali e due artisti che utilizzano i linguaggi contemporanei delle arti visive sono stati scelti per rappresentare il significato di questa narrazione. Artigianato e opere d’arte contemporanea si influenzano a vicenda. La maestra di ricamo ‘Suzhou’, Yao Huifen, ricreerà l’immagine dello Skeleton Fantasy Show attraverso l’utilizzo di oltre un centinaio di tecniche diverse, molto ricercate, e parteciperà poi alla realizzazione dell’opera di Tang Nannan The Forgotten Sea. Wu Jian’an e il maestro del Teatro delle Ombre Wang Tianwen, che hanno già collaborato insieme in passato, daranno vita a nuovi lavori caratterizzati da motivi montani e marittimi, ispirati alla pittura acquatica di Ma Yuan. Tang Nannan, proveniente da una famiglia di teatranti, Wang Tianwen, maestro di ombre cinesi, Wu Jian’an proveniente dal distretto di Jinshan e Yao Huifen da Suzhou collaboreranno per dare vita a un’opera collettiva. L’intero allestimento appare come un network di rimandi intertestuali e creazioni corali: ogni artista collaborerà con gli altri tre e, allo stesso modo, altri curatori e artisti parteciperanno al flusso creativo con performance e happening che renderanno il Padiglione Cinese uno spazio in costante evoluzione. In questa rete di scambi reciproci, le tradizioni sono accolte, reinterpretate e di nuovo tramandate.

L’arte cinese non è mai intesa come la creazione isolata di un singolo artista, ma un’opera collettiva che attraversa cinque millenni, una manifestazione colta del genio creativo, una raccolta di idee che si perpetua da secoli. Gli artisti cinesi non lavorano in solitudine, le loro opere sono sempre una sorta di risposta, una specie di illuminazione: l’anticipazione di un eco, di una rielaborazione critica, di un commento che seguirà al suo manifestarsi.

 

Il Padiglione presentato alla 57. Biennale porterà nel cuore del percorso espositivo un archivio che ambisce a trasformare l’idea di “Bu Xi” in documenti e testimonianze concrete che dimostrino le discendenze linguistiche dei quattro artisti. Diversamente dalle precedenti edizioni, questa sezione non è un mero supplemento alla mostra, ma ne costituisce l’essenza spirituale.

 

Ogni artista cinese ha un suo lignaggio educativo ed è a sua volta insegnante di qualcun altro; finché continuerà a fare arte, il suo maestro non morirà mai. Questa sorta di discorso universale nel quale sono evidenti i richiami alle esperienze vernacolari, alle arti applicate, ai nuovi linguaggi e alla tradizione espressiva, creerà un campo energetico di “Bu Xi”. Un dinamismo che rende l’arte cinese un dispositivo completamente autonomo e unico rispetto alla cultura occidentale fondata piuttosto sull’intuizione individuale, ed è il segreto che la civiltà cinese tramanda da migliaia di anni, di generazione in generazione. È questa la risposta del Padiglione Cinese a Viva Arte Viva.

 

Il Padiglione Cina alla 57. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia è supportato dalla Repubblica Popolare Cinese, commissionato dal China Arts and Entertainment Group con il contributo di Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum e Beijing Times Art Museum, in collaborazione con le istituzioni Ming Yuan Group e Bloomage International Investment Group. Il supporto tecnico è offerto da Hongri Lighting, Shanghai Helu Culture Communication Co. Ltd e Shanghai Mana Network Co. Ltd. Il coordinamento artistico è affidato a Davide Quadrio in collaborazione con Arthub.

Nei sei mesi di esposizione, il Padiglione Cina non offrirà solo un viaggio attraverso cinque secoli di storia nelle diverse forme di espressione artistica che caratterizzano la produzione locale ma permetterà al visitatore di vivere una vera e propria esperienza multisensoriale interattiva, grazie a diverse forme di coinvolgimento studiate appositamente per il pubblico.

I centottanta giorni che libereranno lo spirito dello “Bu Xi” saranno in grado di evocare la quintessenza della cultura cinese permettendole brillare sulla superfice del Mare Adriatico.”

Padiglione Cina

57. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte - La Biennale di Venezia

 

 

Continuum – Generation by Generation

A cura di Qiu Zhijie

 

13 maggio 2017 – 26 novembre 2017

Anteprima per la stampa: 10 maggio 2017, dalle ore 11.00 alle 16.00

Opening: 11 maggio 2017, ore 15.00

Padiglione USA

Mark Bradford’s exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2017 is born out of his longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world we all inhabit. For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. His selection of ordinary materials represents the hair salon, Home Depot, and the streets of Los Angeles—both the culture industry and the grey economy.  Bradford renews the traditions of abstract and materialist painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist.

Bradford’s longtime social and intellectual interests will be present in the Pavilion, most notably in his concern for marginalized people, both their vulnerability and their resiliency, and the cyclical threat and hope of American unfulfilled social promise. Coming at a moment of terrible uncertainty, Tomorrow is Another Day is a narrative of ruin, violence, agency, and possibility, a story of ambition and belief in art’s capacity to engage us all in urgent and profound conversations, and even action.

Following its debut in Venice, Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day will be on view at The Baltimore Museum of Art from September 2018 through January 2019.

¡Únete! Join Us! - Padiglione Spagna

Artist Jordi Colomer and curator Manuel Segade will represent Spain at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. 

¡Únete! Join Us! ​invites visitors to become participants in an exploration of nomadism and collective agency. 

Transhumance, wanderings, journeyings, strayings, displacement: these themes are key to ¡Únete! Join Us!​, whose reference point is rooted in urban utopias that use movement as part of a radical rethinking of social imagination. Marking a return to his early sculptural and theatrical interest, Jordi Colomer’s exhibition at Pavilion of Spain is conceived as an installation of installations. 

Precarious sculptures and transitory architectures form a theatre within the pavilion, encompassing its audience as they walk through the space and turning them into actors, mobilising the space with their presence. The installations offer a path via several video narratives; a journey of occasions, unexpected encounters, playful improvisations and collective gestures that reveal how a community turns an urban landscape into a potential site for exchange, capable of affecting reality. 

“The city is something that needs to be moving,” notes curator Manuel Segade. “A contemporary urban landscape represents displacement and various themes involving movement – political, social and physical – while also moving between the public and the personal.” The fictional premise of the video pieces involves a group of people moving across different sites, exploring the semantics of displacement. 

An abandoned racetrack, an emergency trailer park, tourism-spoiled landscapes through the Mediterranean’s coastal areas and other spaces exclusively repurposed in detail to imitate pre-existing locations. These decidedly low-resource settings are a reflection on the uncertainty and ambivalence of a mobile, unstable, border-crossing citizenry. Suspended between a portable pavilion and a wanderer's wagon, a moveable contraption connects the spaces via an itinerary that conjures a Kafkaesque Babel where nomadic motion becomes linguistic commotion, a vernacular displacement inflecting and translating the activities of a de-territorialized community. Colomer’s community could be seen as a poetical occupation of a utopia under construction. Spain has always played a prominent role in the history of la Biennale di Venezia. Its pavilion in the Venice Giardini was designed in 1922 by Javier De Luque and renovated in 1952 by Joaquin Vaquero Palacios. 

Since 1950, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation has been directly responsible for coordinating the country’s exhibitions in the Spanish Pavilion, and, throughout this time, it has strived to promote Spain’s rich artistic heritage and talent. Acción Cultural Española (AC/E - Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action) has been involved in the support of contemporary creation at the Venice Biennale, both in the production of the Spanish Pavilion and in the international selection. 

Artists invited to exhibit and intervene at the Spanish Pavilion have included Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, Susana Solano, Santiago Sierra, and most recently, Miquel Barceló, Dora García and Lara Almárcegui. 

Artist: ​Jordi Colomer Curator: Manuel Segade 

Commissioners: ​Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) 

Supporter: ​Spain’s Public Agency for Cultural Action (AC/E) 

Exhibition​: 13 May to 26 November 2017 

Press conference ​Wednesday, 10 May 2017 at 12.15 pm 

Official opening​: Wednesday, 10 May 2017 at 1.30 pm 

Cecilia Alemani per il Padiglione Italia 2017

Il ministro dei Beni e delle attivita’ culturali e del turismo, Dario Franceschini ha reso pubblico il nome del prossimo curatore del Padiglione Italia, che sarà Cecilia Alemani.

Non si sa ancora nulla del progetto ma viene segnalato come selezionato da una rosa di proposte.

Cecilia Alemani e’ curatrice del High Line Art di New York, di Frieze Projects New York, ha collaborato con diversi enti internazionali quali Tate Modern.