La Biennale di Venezia!

It was a really precious day for me... I have been in Venice to see the "Venice Biennale" I have always wanted to be in Venice, while there is the biennale. Luckily I was in Rome for Erasmus (still), so I went there only for one day, therefore I had to be really fast... I had the chance to visit Arsenale (Campo Tana) and Giardini.

I was primarily affected by the environment, because I was in one of the most beautiful and romantic cities of the world: Venice... So being in there, while surrounded by art made me feel like I was in a wonderful dream.


























The 55th International Art Exhibition, that is curated by Massimiliano Gioni is open to public until 24 November 2013 at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in other different places around Venice. The title of the biennale is "The Encyclopedic Palace" with works spanning over the past century, while there are new commissions. Over 150 artists' from 37 different countries are included.

..."Massimiliano Gioni introduced the choice of theme evoking the Italio-American self-taught Marino Auriti who "on November 16, 1995 filed a design with the US Patent office depicting his Palazzo Eniclopedico, an imaginary museum that was meant to house all wordly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human race, from the wheel to the satellite. Auriti's plan was never carried out, of caurse, but the dream of universal, all-embracing knowledge crops up throughout history, as one that eccentrics like Auriti share with many other artists, writers, scientists, and prophets who have tried -often in vain- to fashion an image of the world that will capture its infinite variety and richness." (http://www.labiennale.org)"

The Biennale Arte 2013 will attempt "an inquiry in the realms of the imaginary and the functions of imagination. What room is left for internal images - for dreams, hallucination and visions - in an era besieged by external ones? And what iğs the pointof creating an image of the world when th eworld itself has become increasingly like an image? How far does the domainof the imaginary extend, when people are still fighting in the name of images?"... (http://www.myartguides.com/venice-art-biennale-2013/art-biennale/the-encyclopedic-palace/item/478-55-international-art-exhibition)

I have to add that there were pavilions for different countries, that were really enjoyable to see. I could not see all of them, but put photographs and informations about the ones that affected me.
Here are some photographs that I took from the Venice Biennale (from the Giardini), the works in pavilions I really like...



Ai Weiwei's installation for the French Paviilon

Every Chinese family typically have at least one stool that has several purposes, that passes through generation to generation. All of these stools, which have three legs have been manufactured in a uniform and used by all sectors of the society for centuries, but with the cuktural revolution, the production of these kind of objects started to stop. Apart from wood, materials like metal and plastic became standard. Ai Weiwei's work, called "Bang" is made with 886-three legged wooden stools made by traditional craftsmen. For the 2013 Venice Art Biennale, he wanted to do something that is not common to find. He put a lot of wooden stool which are all related to each other, that all have a massive look, "which is about the increasing volume of organisms in our world's megacities" We think that one stool symbolizes an individual, so the work show the individul's relationship with an immoderate system and other people in a postmodern world, that develops and changes really quickly.

The Pavilon of the United States of America by Sarah Sze

The work responds directly to the locations they have been commissioned for, transforming one's perspective of space and architecture through radical shifts in scale, occupying the often overlooked or peripheral areas of the adressed building with large-scale interventions. She included the exterior of the building to her work with a neoclassical approach in a different way, challenging the real order of palladian architectural style, that was normally modeled on Classical Roman arhitecture, in which symmetry an d proportions were important. The plan of the pavilion invites visitors into a rotunda (a building having a circular plan and a dome), through a central entrance. The artist closed off the main access and made the entrance at the left side of the building, aiming to make visitors travel through the structure in a logical way. Her target is to enwrite a very fragile personal order in a disordered univers by making calculated installations and putting objects which Sze found throughout Venice.

My source is: (http://www.designboom.com/art/sarah-sze-represents-the-us-at-venice-art-biennale-2013/)

The Dutch Pavilion is very simple and fantastic for me. Works in the pavilion is made by Mark Manders. The pavilion showcases 'Room with Broken Sentence" curate dby Lorenzo Benedetti. There are Mander's installations made by various materials like clay, wood, etc, one of which is 4 meters high. He turns back to crazy consumerist dynamics of today and makes sculptures that seem to have always been there, that contains a mystery.The way he used the materials is like "nothing is what it seems. For example epoxy lookslike clay, clay looks like bronze, and bronze seems like wood, which enforces the mysteriousness.

Here is the work of Berlinde De Bruyckere that is exhibited in the pavilion of Belgium. The work that really affected me with its intensity. The name of her work is 'Kreupelhout - Cripplewood' a new and the only installation that is in the pavilion and "is inspired by the dialogue with the city of Venice, its history and the numerous paintings and sculptures of Saint Sebastian around the city. 'Kreupel - Cripplewood..."is the artist's plea for undisclosed beauty. 'Kreupel - Cripplewood' is a synthesis of themes that are the foundaiton of De Bruyckere's oevre: life and death; Eros and Thanatos; strenght and vulnerability, oppression and protection; desire and suffering; desolation and unification."..." this work is an enormous, gnarled and knotted, uprooted elm tree, merging into a mass of trunks and limbs with an almost disturbing resemblance to the muscles, tendones and bones of the human form. Between the tree's limbs, soft pillows, blankets and rags are used to soothe and support the exposed body. In 'Kreupelhout - Cripplewood', the metamorphosis form man to tree and vice versa, is tangible, but incomplite."... (http://www.smak.be/tentoonstelling.php?la=en&id=563)

The Russian pavilion by Vadim Zakharow

Here golden coins are raining down continuosly, through a hole, in to a 'cave womb' at the ground floor and only women visitors can get into the lower floors with an ubrella to protect them selves from the coin shower. 

The work has a mythological meaning: ..."Danae, according to Greek mythology, is the mother of the Greek hero Perseus; she was impregnated by the god Zeus, who appeared to her as a shower of golden rain."... (http://it.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2013/june/03/venice-biennale-the-russian-pavilion/)

In the floor above a man in suitwatches the coin shower, while eating groundnuts, throwing the nutshells on the floor. On the walls in this room is written "Gentlemen, time has come to confess our Rudeness, Lust, Narcissism, Demagoguery, Falsehood, Banality, and Greed, Cynicism, Robbery, Speculation, Wastefulness, Gluttony, Seduction, Envy and Stupidity." The work actually refers also to the regime of Putin.

The Canadian pavilion by Shary Boyle, 'Music for Silence'

In her works ..."she blends historical narratives and fantastical fictions with her own personal impressions, she creates imaginary worlds that elicit a range of psychological and emotional responses."... (http://www.gallery.ca/venice/)

"The Canada pavilion will become a sanctuary where inner and outer space-co-exist." (Shary Boyle)