Money in the Curtains in Venice, Italy

Venice Biennale at the Arsenale

I am becoming especially adept at getting lost in Venice. It was a very long walk over to the Arsenale from the Giardini keeping this fact in mind. Everything I read about the Italian Pavilion was true - it was awful, overwhelming, and too much exhibited in once space to focus on anything. I tried and failed. One of the highlights of the Corderie/Artiglierie was the location. It featured old and new machinery from the old shipyard and was right next to the lagoon. A highlight were the remains from the GELITIN performance that took place the opening week of the biennial.



I devoted 1:50 - 2:50 PM to Christina Marclay's The Clock and it lived up to every moment of the hype. I could have spent a couple more hours in front of this video but needed to see the rest of the exhibitions as my ticket was only good for that day. The sheer amount of clocks, references to passing time, and reintroducing clips from the same movie so they appear in real time (in just the hour I saw) was incredible! I couldn't look at a watch on a person's arm the same way again for the rest of the day. Another reason why I loved this video is that I'm guaranteed never to see it in its entirety so I'll always wonder what took place in the hours I couldn't view. My phone never reverted to Italian time, so I've been spending my days adding six hours to whatever time it says. Walking into The Clock and knowing exactly what time it was, was reassuring. There were 12 white Ikea couches constantly rotating with people. Here is an image from Manfredi Bellati of the installation:



Urs Fischer's wax sculptures were also one of my favorite pieces to see this day. This is what his self-portrait looked like 1.5 months into the exhibition (here's to wondering how long it will continue to burn as the Biennale is up through November and it was 2/3rds of the way through in July).



The one thing I was annoyed with is how his head fell in such a "placed" position compared to all the other parts of his body. I know full well that this was arranged by someone to show that it indeed was a person's lifelike figure at one point but it was slightly insulting to view in that format.



This is what the sculpture looked near the opening:




Here is the large Untitled sculpture that looked like it went through violent destruction before my arrival:



Before:


[Both early Urs Fischer images via.]

I also enjoyed Jean-Luc Mylayne's bird photographs and had to show two images in one since the reflections were hard to contend with.



Unfortunately, there was no place to float postcards ANYWHERE in the vicinity of the Giardini or the Arsenale. That is my job to find tomorrow. There are plenty of exhibitions associated with the Biennale throughout the city. I will have to find the place.



Venice at night (twice) near the Arsenale.

Thomas Hirshhorn's "Crystal of Resistance" Rocks! (Literally)

Selected passages from the 2.5 page artist statement translated from German: "With Crystal of Resistance I want to cut a window, a door, an opening or simply a hole, into reality. That is the breakthrough that leads and carries everything along."


(the entryway into the Swiss Pavilion)

"With my work Crystal of Resistance I want to give a form that creates the conditions for thinking something new.... With this form I want to create a truth, a truth that resists facts, opinions, and commentaries. It is not about 'my truth', but about truth in itself. In order to make contact with truth, to confront truth and to be in conflict with it - conflict in art means creating something - I need a motif. That motif is 'crystal' in Crystal of Resistance.



"I want to work in over-haste. I want to work in heedlessness and I want to work in panic."



"I want to work with the precarious and in the precarious."



"I'm thinking of a skin, a shell or a geode."



"I want my work Crystal of Resistance to be an indestructible and earthly dwelling of the gods - as the cave of the giant crystals of the Naica Mine in Mexico. I want to create a place that is so strange, so entirely from myself - only from myself - and so distinct that it becomes universal. I want to make a large, dense, highly charged, luminous and meaningful work. There will be many elements to see, there will be 'too much." It has to be 'too much,' not because it is important to get to see everything or spend a lot of time looking, but 'too much' so that the things do not lie."

Venice Day 2: The Biennale at the Giardini

I only made two faux-pas today that I am aware of: sitting in the wrong place for breakfast (yogurt, granola and something that hardly passes for orange juice) and not entering the Arsenale correctly with my ticket. First stop: the three day Vaporetto Pass. What an easy mode of transportation! I got to the Giardini at 9:45 AM (shocking to those who know me well) and stood in line for tickets with two dozen others. The grounds where most of the pavilions are located, can only be described as incredible. It's so green and the water is quite vast near the Canale di San Marco. There were a few mosquitoes too (incidentally I had more bites in Italy than my camping trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last summer).

I couldn't help but continue to notice how unideal some of these pavilions were for showing art. Some are so dark and others are overheated. Some of the pavilions have such awkward architecture and I'm wondering if this was one of the reasons why there were so many video installations (more so than I've ever seen in one location).

My favorite installation was Thomas Hirshhorn's Crystal of Resistance in the Swiss Pavilion. I took so many photographs, this will merit it's own blog post.

There were a few highlights from the Illuminations exhibition. Everyone was fascinated by Mauritzio Cattelan's taxidermy pigeons spread throughout the space (exterior and interior). I photographed this group in the learning resource room. Many were tied to the rafters in the ceilings and every once in awhile, I would look up to see that one was suspended only by its feet hanging upside down.



Here is Rirkrit Tirivanija's installation - a bookstore. It was deadly. I couldn't enter.



I didn't photograph the giant Cindy Sherman images. They were interesting from a technical standpoint (they looked like linen wallpaper). Pipilotti Rist's videos were amusing as they featured her typical subject matter overlapped with generic scenes of Venice. Sigmar Polke's work was slightly disappointing and somehow I missed the Fishli and Weiss room!

The national pavilions to ignore: anyone that did not use the space well. Canada and Australia were sheer disappointments. Not that everything needs to be an installation but they were infinitely more interesting when they were.

Christoph Schlingensief in the German Pavilion was clearly the winner of the Golden Lion. I sat in the pews for quite a while watching the videos on the altar in front of me. There were many dead or dying rabbits which immediately brought Joseph Beuys to mind. The Korean Pavilion was oddly fascinating given my new-found interest in artists who use camouflage in their work. Here is Lee Yongbaek's Angel Soldier.



Also in the Korean Pavilion, The Broken Mirror was an excellent display for video art. It was difficult to photograph given the speed of the cracking glass and the people in the room but here is a photograph:



I was pleased to witness a tank running performance in Allora and Calzadilla's Gloria in the American Pavilion. There were no gymnasts performing inside on the airplane seats and they did not hold up as objects of art without some form of interaction. No one was using the ATM machine and the large sign at the entryway of the building warning people that it might eat one's credit card was a deterrent.







I am sure Christian Boltanski has created more superior installations in the past than Chance in the French Pavilion but I was still very happy to see it. It was a loud production with photographs speeding by, wrapped around tracks that encompassed the entire room. Every once in awhile, the apparatus would freeze and I was able to view the endless photographs of baby's faces. From the exhibition brochure: "The Wheel of Fortune: A long strip of photographs of newborns runs through the space at high speed. Sometimes a doorbell rings and the strip, moved by the random will of a computer, stops at one of the babies. Then, the baby's face appears on a monitor. One child is chosen by chance, for better or for worse. His life is still just a blank page."



A break for lunch at the Giardini before heading onto the Arsenale (that half sandwich was $5).

From Venice Beach to the Venice Biennale to ?

Venice, California


Venice, Italy



... and I think I inadvertently visited The Venetian Las Vegas (Bridge of Sighs under construction, Venice, Italy).

Venice Day 1

I lost six hours today (all sleep). I woke up to see the Dolomites momentarily visible in between the clouds. Soon Northern Italian lakes appeared surrounded by red roofs and irregular shaped fields. My first of many glorious mispronounciations occurred when telling the Blue Line driver I needed the Zattere stop [it looked like it should be in French rather than Italian - a mistake I would make quite often in the future]. It was the second to last stop and leisurely boating through the lagoon was a fantastic introduction to Venice.

Fortunately, the Don Orione had Room 116 ready for me at 11:30 AM. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on and had to call and ask the front desk (answer: the room key does it). I immediately took some photographs before my sprawl enveloped the room. There was one work of art on the wall - a peeled Medieval reproduction on a board of some religious scene (I am staying in a place run by the Catholic church and was formerly an orphanage). It was immediately covered with the wafer thin bath towel. I didn't consider the cross on the wall "art" but thought it looked better under a towel and left it that way for a few hours.



I thought I would cover my siestre today and not learn the vaporetto operating on jet lag. I'm staying in Dorsoduro where many of the galleries are located. I am instantly reminded of Amsterdam though there is more water here and the architecture is more phenomenal in Venice. First stop: the Gallerie dell'Accademia.



I was largely disappointed. Half of the building was under construction and I started to find that more fascinating than the artwork. Perhaps it was my desire to find Modern art among the Renaissance.

















While traipsing through the Dorsoduro, I stumbled upon a couple Biennale exhibitions. Here is a a view from the Fondazione Claudio Buziol of Santa Maria d. Salute (the latter I would visit often due to its prominent location).



From there, you look down into the courtyard to see the Future Pass: From Asia to the World exhibition. There were the obligatory Murakami and Nara works but many artists I did not know. It's very humid in Venice and the Biennale is up for several months. This show introduced me to the fact that artwork is displayed in some adverse conditions for this festival (especially paintings which began to show signs of warping in some air-conditioned lacking locations).



The exhibition overlooked the Grand Canal (the hook on the right belongs to an artwork that was not as interesting as the water).



The Future of a Promise: The First Pan Arab Show was quite good. Faycal Baghriche's globe was a highlight (it rotated quickly and the sound overwhelmed the back end of the gallery). There was a sense of urgency about the work and that was what I was drawn to most.




The art highlight of the day belonged to Michael Parekowhai's installation for the New Zealand Pavilion. I could hear the piano playing several hundred feet away before entering. There was no singing or crowd as in the video below (and if there had been, I would have liked it far less). The bronze bulls on the piano were monstrous and their postures added to the element of the performance.



I did find my future house on one of the many walks I took today. It's a fixer upper but the view from the garden is great.



Some random first impressions:

• There are enough plastic bottles in the lagoon to permanently disgust me and make me never purchase one again.

• I've had the urge to collect cigarette packs again since I see them all over the sidewalks.

• Infinity pools must be inspired by the proximity of buildings to water in this city (note to self: look up camo pool covers).

• Saw Larry David's 6'3" doppelganger en route to dinner (which may possible have been the best spaghetti I have ever eaten).

• Best sign: "Bathroom used to disable people."

I walked and walked until it started raining. Back to the hotel with the plan of seeing the Giardini and Arsenale tomorrow.

En Route to Venice via ATL written somewhere over Halifax, Nova Scotia

A photograph of none other than a map (the only image I took the first day).

I'm excited! I haven't felt the sheer pleasure of going somewhere in a long time. I haven't been to Europe since The Netherlands in 2004 where this was a prominent feature of the trip. I am long overdue in returning. I've been thinking a lot about Dorothea Lange's The Road West [see the post below]. I'm traveling "back East," to the old country, etc. but it's that road that is calling me always. I have to find out what is at the end of it. It usually ends in an ocean but there's another to follow and another and another. Lange's road is basking in shiny light. There are no mirages (but there could be) so nothing yet is deceiving. It also symbolizes a hard journey. Am I walking? Am I driving? One thing I know for sure is that I'm going at it alone.

After the earthworks road trip, I committed to going to the Venice Biennale in 2011. It is something I've always wanted to do and at the time, it made sense to go in two years. I started saving my money, obtained a summer stipend, and suddenly, the plan became real. My goal is to complete the final chapter for the book I will self-publish this fall featuring Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water. I come equipped with postcards and Ed Ruscha's "approval." I am going to let those cakes and the hunt for Ruscha go this time as I've been holding onto them for far too long. This isn't a giant summer project that will be completed by the end of the year. It's a concluding chapter to a couple ideas that I recently discovered were not finished. Along this Venice Beach to the Venice Biennale journey, I've also realized a series or two that are just beginning. Ongoing. No rush to complete. Yet. [Stay tuned.]

I've been stock piling New Yorkers for the plane ride and an hour ago I read this in Peter Schjeldahl's review of the Blinky Palermo retrospective at Dia Beacon: "To change your art, Beuys would instruct, change yourself." I may be looking for something like that this trip. One thing I do want to know is how to define what Ed Ruscha meant when he told me to "Rage On."

18th July & 1 August 2011

18th July, around 1 AM the day of departure in Muncie, Indiana



1st August, Pisa Airport (I don't know why it's so low res - it looks fine on my computer = all the better not to read and keep guessing).

But First... Camera Cookies

Via. Why am I thinking Play-doh?

From Venice Beach to the Venice Biennale: Ed Ruscha & the Fake Cakes

The back of the postcard printed and laminated to bring to Italy:



Over the light table:



Laminated approval tests = yes they float!



Now the journey begins.

Hans Peter Feldmann's "Pictures," 1971

Hans Peter Feldmann