Not so hot off the presses, but still on my mind, is a recent trip to the pre-opening of the 60th Venice Biennale. It went like this – I had just settled into a café for a long-awaited cappuccino, still sticky from the two Sicilian blood oranges I had gorged on at the market. I was making a must-see list of pavillions under a bright spring sun when quite suddenly the clouds violently thickened, and a freezing wind began to sweep through the town. People began to run for cover with grimaced faces, glasses flew from the tables, and finally, it started to pour – and did not stop for a week. I fought my way back to a friend’s place with a wet bag of mortadella and a bottle of prosecco, defeated.
Frozen in Venice
On our way to the opening the next day, a vegetable delivery boat plowed into our vaporetto. My friend, a resident of Venice, was taken to the hospital for an evaluation. I was unscathed and instructed to carry on in the name of contemporary art and to report back. Unexpectedly solo and slightly dissuaded, I sat facing the lagoon with an espresso. Thinking. My first visit to the Biennale was in 2007 when artists like Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramović, Jan Fabre, Bill Viola, and Tracy Emin were front-lining. The Pavilions were retrospecting the greats like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and James Lee Byars. I was in a study abroad program getting my MFA. I spent the semester exploring everything, not just the main islands, but as a classmate recalled after our long walk in Burano, ‘You were walking into people’s living rooms.’ Spellbound, I wanted to see every detail down to the ashtrays on people’s coffee tables. There were still quite a few Venetian grandmothers and children in the town squares then; now, this is a rare sight. Even the narrowest streets used by locals are now flooded with tourists using Google Maps. It is with mixed feelings that I keep coming back. Yet, alas, the Biennale was my gateway drug into the world of contemporary art and I cannot stay away, even if inevitably it does not hit like it used to – not since the social justice narrative has entered the arena. And so, something told me to pause and resist the contagion of the pre-opening fever – if only for a day. I decided to freestyle my way through the independent exhibits beyond the Giardini and Arsenale, the main stages of the Biennale.
Mariano Fortuni with wife and collaborator Henriette Negrin, Fortuni collection
I started with the Museo Fortuni, housed in the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, once home to Mariano Fortuni; an iconic textile, fashion, and lighting designer, painter, and collector. The Palazzo is a living dream of Fortuni’s spirit, embodied in his photographs, art collection, and decor. Fortuni Museum consistently features exceptional contemporary artists. On exhibit currently is French sculptor EVA JOSPIN Selva, a whimsical exhibition crafted from what Jospin calls “Poor Materials” of cardboard, plant-based elements, and fibers.
EVA JOSPIN Selva, on view through November at Fortuni Museum
Close by, just over the Academia Bridge is a cluster of shows in collaboration with the Biennale. None, however, are as memorable as James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee’s introspective Invisible Questions That Fill The Air at Palazzo Loredan. Despite being a James Lee Byars fanatic, it was Seung-taek Lee who stole my heart. Born in the same year as Byars, 1932, Seung-taek is still alive. I spent a great deal of time studying his laconically poetic forms and sculptures. Embellishing the epoch when art left space for personal interpretation, I heard a visitor say, “this may be the best exhibit I have ever seen.” I was enlivened by his sentiment. As I came across only a few modern works during my visit this year as sublime, understated, and authentic as Lee Seung-taek’s.
Seung-taek Lee, Pallazo Loredan
Tacita Dean, “One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting” 2021, Palazzo Grassi c/o Paula Cooper Gallery
CATPC sculpture, Dutch Pavilion
Light of the Nations by Yael Bertana, German Pavilion
I was very much looking forward to seeing the German pavilion featuring Yael Bartana and Ersan Montag with an installation called Thresholds. One of my favorite contemporary artists, Yael Bartana, is an Israeli living in Berlin and an outspoken critic of Benjamin Netanyahu. An interesting representation for Germany, which has for the most part suppressed pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Her films are phenomenal, and so is the massive spaceship Light of the Nations, yet I was left with a question – is bigger really better? I become wary when the scale of the art crosses into the realm of theme park attractions.
Kith and Kin by Archie Moore, Australian Pavilion
The winner of the Golden Lion, Archie Moore, with his installation work Kith and Kin representing Australia, was a fine choice for this years Golden Lion. In any case, there were no lights or effects, but rather a laboriously curated ephemeral documentation of ancestral memory through thousands of words linked by the artist written in chalk on the Pavilion walls, surrounding 500 document stacks which look into the deaths of Indigenous Australians in police custody.
Kissing my Feet by Louis Fratino, Giardini
The central exhibition hall includes a compilation of many figurative and expressionist paintings by various artists, living and dead from the Global South. An important and well curated facet of an otherwise anti-climactic day at the Giardini.
To start the day on the right note, I took time to see William Kentridge’s “Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot” just outside the Arsenale. Although in recent years Kentridge’s projects have become grandiosely theatrical, this work was especially personal, intimate, and endearing. His humorous, self-deprecating inner dialogue with himself, coupled with his artistic mastery, brought me back to the Kentridge I once loved.
As fate would have it, we arrived at the Arsenale just as the Italian Minister of Culture was being led into a private viewing, shutting down half of the exhibition. Perhaps for the better – I could not absorb another three hundred works on the theme of decolonization. I did, however, find several outstanding artists who narrowly escaped this ad nauseam dogmatic agenda by way of humor. Overall, it became impossible to discern the meaning of one work from another, and I could not get out of the Arsenale fast enough.
Prêt-à-Patria by Bárbara Sanchez-Kane, Arsenale
Day 4 – The Foundations
And so, leaving behind the Socialist Biennale Republic, I spent the rest of the days exploring what I will call the “Art of the Free World.” I began with the much-talked-about William de Kooning exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the Galleria dell’Accademia. De Kooning’s work needs no introduction from me. But I will say this – in a time when artists’ intentions are masticated and fed to us with a blanket agenda, Abstract Expressionism felt like a safe space. Suddenly, art was restored to its proper form and size, and de Kooning, like wasabi, managed to balance my palate from the fishy aftertaste of the Biennale. On view through September 15th. Afterwards, I headed to see the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize exhibition “Dare to Dream,” which features fresh talents under thirty-five from around the world, including many Ukrainian artists. The films and installation works are deserving and relevant, especially in a time when the world seems to have forgotten about Ukraine.
Pierre Huyghe, Punta dell Dogana
Next, I visited the Pinault collection at Punta della Dogana to experience Pierre Huyghe’s multimedia installation “Liminal.” Huyghe’s monochrome, dystopian, minimalist style is hypnotizing. For 1.5 hours, I watched a skeleton lying in the desert being scanned by a macro lens. The skeleton, which seems to be real, lies on its side clutching dirt, the remains of one shoe tethered to its foot. The night turns to day and back to night, finally, the moon becomes full. A mechanical arm reaches into the sky and pulls abstract objects from the abyss and places them next to the skeleton. This all happens with precision and an ASMR satisfaction factor. I had many associations, revelations, and questions – was it a migrant who died in the desert? A reference to the ancient Egyptians’ connection to the cosmos, bare bones – symbolic of the fundamental truth underlying all superficial ideas which fall away upon death, but through death reveal the ultimate truth. There was no definitive answer, nor did the artist feel a need to give us a statement. It was up to each one of us to continue the conversation with our own higher consciousness, and there it hit me, no conversation with a work of art should be completed for us by the artist or the curator. There were two more shows on my list before the day was to end which I knew would bring it all home. I headed to the Prada Foundation for the ultimate installation work, “Monte Di Pieta,” a project by Christoph Büchel. Anything I reveal will be a spoiler, but let’s just say that it was recommended to me as the anti-Prada experience. Büchel transforms the foundation into a fictitious broke pawn shop with a Da Vinci code element. The slowly unraveling historical clues and clever references to modern society leave much to aha about.
Christoph Büchel, Prada Foundation. On exhibit through November
I ended my journey with friends with a visit to Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore for the absolutely stunning exhibition of Berlinde De Bruyckere’s City of Refuge III, which responds to the church’s monumental architecture. De Bruyckere’s work is a carnal Magnum Opus dedicated to the agony of refugee-ism in pure poetic form. From studying De Bruyckere’s references at the end of the exhibition, one inevitably agrees that politics are inseparable from art, as is the whole of human suffering in all its forms, but, Bruyckere is not using us as a soundboard. She delivers us to the birthplace of interpretation, as great art so often does.
Berlinde De Bruyckere’s, San Giorgio Maggiore. On view until November 24th.