LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

San Trovaso - Dinner in a Garden - I felt exactly like Otello after walking around and looking at art for four day, dinners, parties and not enough sleep - therefore - dinner with a few friends in one of the most beautiful gardens of Venice was perfect. Naif artist Liselotte Hohs Manera gives the most elegant though casual and understated dinners in her garden: where centuries ago it was the first stops for plants for climatization, from far away continents, before being moved to other parts of Italy. We also celebrated art critic, Barbara's birthday with La Biennale's Renato - beautiful Mimmi - artist, Yoki - photographer, Manfredi - 2007 Biennale curator, Rob and, not forgetting Ombra and Othello!

THE END

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Photograph courtesy of T-B A21 Collection

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Isola di San Lazzaro - Always a Little Further - On one of the remotest Islands of Venice within the grounds of Armenian monastery is Olafur Eliasson's light installation ***** Your Black Horizon 2005 - A thin horizontal line directed through a narrow gap at eye level serves as the primary light source in this beautifully design windowless pavilion. The light is constantly changing colors and is calibrated to the specific light conditions of Venice. This is the first realization of T-B A21 new presentation concept, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Limited edition Art Pavilions. These pavilions will be placed in selected venues around the world, that have one very important common denominator: " A stunningly beautiful location with an astonishing View" Francesca von Habsburg. This is such a wonderful experience and if you take the 3.10 pm boat from San Marco, you can include a guided tour of the Armenian monastery as well!

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Fondazione Querini Stampalia - Homespun Tales - In this beautiful Palazzo, still viewable as a private home of two hundred years ago German born sculptor Kiki Smith presents *****Homespun Tales a tale of domestic occupation that mirrors the collection Querini Stampalia while weaving a fractured tale of household yearning. Referencing some characteristic elements of the noble Venetian family home - including their paintings (Pietro Longhi, Antonio Canova, Giovanni Bellini etc.), furniture and mirrors - she creates a new narrative highlighting the resourcefulness of home makers. She does this so cleverly that in some case - like the biscuit objects on the table setting are nearly indistinguishable from her own work. It's a charming fairy tale exhibition that blends in so cleverly with the Venetian dwelling.

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photograph courtesy Manfredi Bellati
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Museo Correr - *****Lucian Freud - This is the best show in Venice - it was so refreshing to see real paint on canvas AT LAST, if I remember rightly there isn't even one painting, in the traditional sense in the Arsenale show! Curated by William Feaver, this retrospective exhibition shows eighty-five pieces, some specifically created for the occasion. Since Lucian Freud won the Purchase Prize in 1951 he has built up a formidable reputation as one of the most powerful contemporary figurative painters. Portraits and nudes are his specialties, often observed in arresting close-up as well as dogs and you all know how much I love dogs! Not to be missed.

www.britishcouncil.org/italy-arts-lucianfreud.htm

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Isola di San Giorgio - Missoni Dinner # 2 -What did they like best at the Biennale? For Michael Chow - of the Mr Chow restaurants, art collector, painter, designer or renaissance man as he like to describe himself it was the Ed Ruscha exhibition in the United States Pavilion..... Tai Missoni, founding father of the fashion house, would rather watch sports and for Angela Missoni the ladies clothes designer it was the Candice Breitz video's Mother and Father. Good Choices!

www.missoni.it

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Isola di San Giorgio - Missoni dinner - aboard their house boat Timoteo was the place to be - forget Peter Allen's 413 foot yacht party - the Missonis do it better, it's understated chic where all the food is brought from home and picked in the garden and cooked by the crew themselves on board. Even the eggs came from Missoni hens, but I hate to disappoint you, they are regular not rainbow striped!!!! Quiz: whose shoes are whose? Try and pair them together - hosts, Angela, Tai and Rosita Missoni - artist, Anish Kapoor - restaurateur and collector, Michael and Eva Chow - journalist, Princess Marina Pignatelli - China Pavilion curator, Cai Guo-Qiang - Art Basel curator, Samuel Keller - NYT's editor, Stefano Tonchi - N.Y. gallery owner, Nanette Kettner - Daily Telegraph arts editor, Sarah Crompton - photographer, Manfredi Bellati - Venetian architect, Matteo Corvino...........

www.missoni.it

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photograph courtesy Manfredi Bellati
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Arsenale and Vergini Garden - China Pavilion - The inaugural China Pavilion, curated by Cai Guo-Qiang entitled Virgin Garden: Emersion conists of two spaces - inside and outside. The interior a former naval oil storage facility features a video installation - Shout 2005 by Xu Zhen - video footage of forty sites in Shangai that depict a sudden scream by an unknown party halting strangers on the street as they turn towards a hidden camera - it explores the instintive and universal human response to the unexpected - hey it's Candid Camera! All Kidding aside this is such a strong and beautiful pavilion, it merits a visit.

www.venicechinapavilion.org

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Arsenale - Always a Little Further - In the same room as the Vasconcelos hang the povocative posters by the New York based Guerrilla Girls, a bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks! They use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. The mystery surrounding their identities has attracted attention - they could be anyone and be anywhere!
http://www.guerillagirls.com

My favorite installation was Louise Bourgeois's sound installation - ***** The Murmuring of the Singing Water 2001 - her feeble nonagenarian voice recites nursery rhymes and other children songs like " Sur le Pont d'Avignon" with such simplicity and joie de vivre - it's so charming and mesmerizing, I couldn't come get away!



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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Arsenale - Always a little Further - the title of this exhibition of 49 international artists - curated by Rosa Martinez - is taken from one of the Corto Maltese books, a fictional character created by the Venetian writer and comic-designer, Hugo Pratt. Corto personifies the myth of the romantic traveler: always independent, always open to chance and risk, and always crossing all kinds of frontiers in pursuit of his own destiny. Taking a fictional character as inspiration is a way of affirming that art is an imaginary construct and that fantasy helps us towards a better understanding of reality. The exhibition Always a Little Further is not only an essay presenting artists and aesthetic trends relevant at the beginning of the third millennium but, also an ode to feminism. This is apparent when you walk in and are confronted by a big neo-classical chandelier made out of tampons by Joana Vasconcelos called A Noiva 2003! Pin It

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Peggy Guggenheim Collection - dinner on the roof terrace: at the European inauguration of the Louise T Blouin Foundation - the new philanthropic agency working internationally in the field of cultural development, the dinner was also in honor of the first ever China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale - a milestone which marks a turning point in political, economic and cultural growth within Chinese contemporary art. The LTB Foundation international advisory council boast such names as: Francesco Clemente, Renee Fleming, Antony Gormley, Michael Govan, Alexis Gregory, Damien Hirst, Jeremy Irons, Bianca Jagger, Jeff Koons, Peter Marino, Richard Meier, Thomas Sachs, David Salle, Mario Testino, Robert Wilson and many more......

www.ltbholding.com

www.venicechinapavilion.org

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - United States Pavilion - I wasn't very excited by this exhibition at first, but it grew on me especially after seeing all the other pavilions - and - I had time to stop and think.

Ed Ruscha's - *****Course of the Empire 2005 is a combination of ten paintings based on his 1992 Blue Collar group. On the Left hand side there are the five original black and white canvases depicting urban landscapes. In the right hand galleries there are the five new colour pictures depicting in Ruscha's words " an accelerated, aged version of the same urban lanscapes, possibly to the point of deterioration." Well before the Biennale dealer, Larry Gagosian had already sold all the new works to museums. His party for Mr. Ruscha on the Grand Canal was so coveted that the blue entrance bracelets that read "Ed Ruscha Venice 2005" sold on the black market for $200 each!

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - British Pavilion - No we are not in London at Madame Tussauds but still in Venice. Photographed during the photo call after the press conference Gilbert and George - *****Ginkgo Pictures 2005 are exactly what I expected and more, they do not delude the visitor - these are pure works of great art. On returning to their hotel in NYC after a successful big show Gilbert explains "We picked up these strange leaves off the pavement." They were gingko leaves and in the far East the tree is an object of veneration, associated with longevity and reputed to have miraculous powers and these properties act as a metaphor for the vital life-force that runs throughout the twenty-five pictures. The double imagery of the Ginko leaf and the symmetry of the pictorial compositions are in turn mirrored in the works. By featuring themselves in their own work they have ".... enshrined in a degree of sheer celebrity which renders them simultaneously iconic and institutional. Like both Warhol and Beuys before them, Gilbert and George make art which appeals to the vast audiences more usually claimed by rock stars." rightly writes Michael Bracewell. In fact during their whole stay in the giardini they were followed by fans, TV cameras and journalists - it was a scene!!!

http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-art-venice-biennale.htm

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Giardini - lunch break - with between 7,000 and 10,000 visitors for the three press days it was pretty difficult to get a chair and eat a dry sandwich sitting down - thank God for Illy coffee - one of the sponsors - who had the great idea to provide 1,500 Illychairs, folding chairs complete with shoulder straps which anyone could pick up and cart around. (Inside gossip: 70 chair were stolen on the second day and taken away by boat......)!!! Famous architect Matteo Thun said that these chairs "....were his favorite work of art"!

Photographed above, the Rai Sat TV crew stop for lunch: Missoni's VIP P.R. Gerlinde Guelfenbein was styling host Michela Moro's outfit while her co-host Daniel Berger looks on as do the camera crew and make-up, as well as art P.R. freelancer Cristina Pariset. The whole crew is in Venice for one week to prepare a two hour special on the Biennale, scheduled for June 19th. With a work load of conducting about fifteen interviews a day Michela Moro told me that the Biennale this year "Is different from all the previous ones because it has all the emotional intelligence of women".

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Photograph courtesy La Biennale Press Office
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

Giardini - Italian Pavilion: The Experience of Art - Video # 2 -At the Biennale this year there were a lot of videos and installations and very little art intended as paint on canvas. As, I don't have much attention span to stand in the dark and watch videos... A video really has to grab me, for me to remain focused. In fact, I want to go back with the right mentality and time to just focus on all the videos. Candice Breitz's two glamorous and sophisticated videos *****Mother and ***** Father 2005 are exceptional. The South African - who lives in Berlin - has very cleverly clipped short dialogue of famous film stars from cult movies and pieced them together in a sort of very fast slide show to make a new story of her own - it's the father and the mother separately giving advice to their children - for me the text reminded me of a deja-vu situation.

Before I leave this pavilion - may I just mention how much I loved Jenny Holzer's Purple Cross 2004 installation - I am a fan of hers!

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photograph courtesy La Biennale Press Office - image has been censored
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - Italian Pavilion: The Experience of Art: Video #1 - sorry but I don't have the guts to publish the the entire photo - I therefore cropped it - please forgive me Francesco Vezzoli I really enjoyed your slick four minute "Hollywood production" video an imaginary - *****Trailer for a remake of Hore Vidal's Caligula, 2005 - a tribute to Gore Vidals 1979 pornographicc film Caligula - full of stars like Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, Milla Jovovich, Helen Mirren and it was narrated by Vidal himself. Pin It

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - Italian Pavilion: The Experience of Art - though the Francis Bacon - triptych 1983 -room didn't represent his best work, I liked the colors of the paintings with the colors of the dresses of artists Eva and Adele who have been coming to the Venice Biennale since 1990 - "wherever we are is museum" - they told me also that they are "coming out of the future"..........

www.evaadele.com Pin It

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - Italian Pavilion: The Experience of Art - Power - Money - and phrases like "You make history when you do business" are tattooed on the entrance to the Italian Pavilion. Golden Lion prize for Lifetime Achievement Barbara Kruger's -*****untitled (facade) 2005 - is a protest against western power. She is the only recipient of the 5 Golden Lion prizes I liked and agree with. Since the 1970's her slogans, which are easily regonizable like " I shop therefore I am" questions the viewer about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire.

www.barbarakruger.com

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photograph by Manfredi Bellati
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Giardini - Japanese Pavilion - with all the distractions outside - at last I'm inside the Biennale which this year has been dubbed "La Biennale delle Donne" because for the first time in the history of its 110 years of activity the direction has been entrusted to two women directors, Mari­a de Corral and Rosa Marti­nez - art historians, critics and independent curators from Spain. The two exhibition projects - The Experience of Art (in the Italian Pavilion) and Always a Little Further (at the Arsenale) are curated and conceived respectively by Mari­a de Corral and by Rosa Martinez.

Let's start in the Japanese Pavilion with a great lady photographer - Ishiuchi Miyako "Mother's 2000-2005 - traces of the future" this exhibition of photos and other images creates a portrait of various items left behind by the artist's mother, through these she is able to reflect quietly on the discordant relationship the two women had, while contemplating what she describes as "Sadness beyond imagination". The exhibition can also be seen as work that attempts to recapture the "mother" as a "woman".

www.jpf.go.jp/venezia-biennale/

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005

In the Basin of San Marco - Harush shlomo - floating installation 2005 - a specially built catamaran that created the illusion that the “boat" constructed in open weave aluminum would be expected to sink rather than float. The installation was made especially for Venice, it reflected and was conceptually inseparable from the surrounding movement and traffic of people and other boats in the canals and lagoon. Would this "boat" stay inflated for the three day exhibiton period?

www.harushshlomo.com

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Outside the Giardini - young kids were distributing these flyer cards - the actual banner hangs on the Accademia Bridge - June July August 2005 - Curiously, I had already photographed and I am attracted to Patrick Mimran's New York "Billboard Project". Started in 2001 in Chelsea - home of the art galleries - the idea is simple - they are designed to get people talking about art in different ways. Very clever!

www.mimran.com

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Outside the Giardini - Fabrizio Plessi's - Mare Verticale - a 44 meter high video installation - a totem pole of steel and aluminum that illuminates Venice with technology - greets the visitor on the Laguna basin in front of the Giardini. Shockingly, with Plessi, there are only five artists representing Italy in the two main exhibition areas of the 51st Biennale di Venezia - in the Italian Pavilion, the exhibition - The Experience of Art - curated by Maria de Corral shows works by 42 well-known and up and coming International artists - only one is Italian!

www.plessi.it

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LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2005
Drinks on the Grand Canal - Murano glass designer - Marie Brandolini - seen here with - royal photographer - Mario Testino - drinks party on the Brandolini Palazzo terrace overlooking the Grand Canal was the first stop of our five day visit to Venice for the Biennale. A great social mix of out of towners and bright young Venetian aristocrats, as well as, designers, gallery owners, and artists drank caipirinias out of her beautiful colorful Goti. While downstairs long lines formed to order not only Brandolini's hand blown glasses of all shapes, sizes and styles, but also her new necklaces and paper weights in the Laguna B collection.

www.lagunab.com

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