Saturday 9th June – Palazzo Papadopoli: Ukrainian Pavilion – A Poem About and Inland Sea. The works exhibited in the Ukrainian Pavilion were created by a group of artists from Ukraine and other countries. The exhibition plans on raising questions such as the important Ukrainian film director, Alexander Dovzhenko did in the script for Poem about and Inland Sea and throughout his career – what is it to be Ukrainian?
The artists are: Serhiy Bartkov, Dzine, Alexander Hnilitsky/Lesia Zaiats, Boris Mikhailov, Juergen Teller, Mark Titchner, Sam Taylor-Wood.
Sam Taylor-Wood – That White Rush. Superficially minimalist in style, Sam Taylor-Wood’s works have more to do with time-actions, creating active pieces that often, but not always, last for a limited amount of time. In her newest video works she examines the theoretical zone between flat surfaces of both classical painting and active video. In the work That White Rush, DVD, 2007, based on a W.B. Yeats’ poem, a beautiful swan slowly dissolves on top of a girl as she watches the long progression.
Serhiy Bratkov – Hell Land and Hell Operator – Light Box, 2007. For the Biennale, Bartkov has created a series of new portrait works about Ukrainians at work in a steel mill. These ruff and brutal light-box installations, with chemical drums and slabs of steel with video, are installed in the ornate rooms of the Palazzo and use the architecture of the building to continue his interest in new modes of large-scale photography. Along side the light-boxes, is a video documenting the flow of molten steel before it is shaped and formed. Here, he creates a tension between the industrial might and power of the event and the blatant sexual references that that exist in the real world.
