Venice
Biennale 2013: Giardini – Russian Pavilion.
Vadim Zakharov’s Danae installation
in the Russian Pavilion, curated by Udo Kittelmann, has united the upper and
lower floors of the pavilion in a single project. The theme of the
installation turns around the ancient Greek myth of Danae. Vadim Zakharov: “The
installation has two points for viewing, in the central hall of the Pavilion a
large square hole has been made in the ceiling of the lower exhibition space,
and an altar rail with cushions for kneeling has been built on the upper floor,
around the hole. Kneeling and looking down, we fall into another semantic and
poetic space, into which golden coins fly from a pyramid ceiling.”
Russian
Pavilion. Vadim Zakharov adds, “Below we see women with umbrellas,
which protect them from being struck by the coins. The lower hall can only be
visited by women. This is not about sexism but merely follows the logic of the
anatomical construction of the myth. What is masculine can only fall inside
from above, in the form of golden rain. The lower level of the Pavilion is a
“cave womb,” keeping tranquility, knowledge, and memory intact.”
Russian
Pavilion. “A falling shower of gold
makes reference to the seduction of Danae as an allegory for human desire and
greed, but also to the corrupting influence of money. Through his artistic
staging, Zakharov allows this ancient myth to find a contemporary temporal
dimension. Philosophical, sexual, psychological, and cultural fragments become
concentrated into a theater-like overall composition throughout the Pavilion
rooms. The time has come to confess
our Rudeness, Lust, Narcissism, Demagoguery, Falsehood, Banality, and Greed,
Cynicism, Robbery, Speculation, Wastefulness, Gluttony, Seduction, Envy, and
Stupidity.” Curator Udo Kittelmann
said.
Venice
Biennale 2013: Giardini – British Pavilion.
The British Council presents English
Magic, a new exhibition by Jeremy Deller, which was conceived and
created for the British Pavilion and curated by Emma Gifford-Mead. The
exhibition reflects the roots of much of Deller’s work, focusing on British
society - its people, icons, myths, folklore and its cultural and political
history. He weaves together high and low, popular and rarefied to create unique
and thought provoking work.
Above:The
Sandringham Estate, Norfolk, UK – 24 October 2007.
Courtesy
British Council – photograph by Cristiano Conte
Jeremy
Deller
British Pavilion. English Magic
addresses events from the past, present and an imagined future. Deller frames
these instances in a way that is contemporary but also true to the original
subject, weaving a narrative that is almost psychedelic; hovering delicately
between fact and fiction, real and imagined.
Above: Bevan tried to change the nation. Various
cities and towns across the UK, 1972-73.
British Pavilion. “We sit starving amidst our
gold.” Represents long dead Victorian
designer and socialist William Morris throwing Roman Abramovich’s 377-foot
yacht, Luna, which was moored outside the Giardini, into the Lagoon.
British Pavilion. English Magic, a new film
work by Jeremy Deller, forms a major part of his exhibition The film brings
together many of the ideas behind the works in the Pavilion, featuring visual
and thematic elements that reflect Deller's interest in the diverse nature of
British society and its broad cultural, socio-political and economic
history. The music is performed by the Melodians Steel Orchestra and was
recorded in Studio 2 of Abbey Road Studios in London.
Above.
Ooh-oo-hoo ah-ha ha yeah. Abbey Road Studios, London 18 March 2013.
British
Pavilion. The Small Faces. A selection of Neolithic hand axes, dated around
4,000 BC, found along the Thames Valley.
British
Pavilion. True to British culture, a good “cuppa tea” was offered, and most
appreciated.
photograph
and copyright manfredi bellati
Venice
Biennale 2013: Giardini – United States Pavilion. In the United States
Pavilion, Sarah Sze’s Triple Point Installation co-commissioned by Holly Block
executive director of The Bronx Museum of the Arts and by critic and
independent curator Carey Lovelace. Since the 1990s, Sarah Sze has developed a
sculptural aesthetic that transforms space through radical shifts in scale,
colonizing peripheral spaces, engaging with the history of a building, and
altering the viewer’s perception and experience of architecture through large
scale, site-specific interventions.
United
States Pavilion. Sze approached the pavilion as a site of live observation and
experimentation; much of the exhibition evolved on-site over a three-month
installation period. Elements from the urban landscape of Venice, photographs of
stone, leaves from the Giardini, tickets from the vaporetto, were collected to
serve the growth of these installations. Small fragments of the sculptures were
dispersed throughout shops and roofs around via Garibaldi, to be discovered by
chance within the fabric of daily life.
Co-commissioner
Carey Lovelace, artist Sarah Sze, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Richard
Armstrong and co-commissioner Holly Block, executive director of The Bronx
Museum of the Arts.
The United States Pavilion
photograph
and copyright manfredi bellati
United States Pavilion. Triple Point
brings together many of the ideas that Sze has developed during her practice.
Central to the exhibition is the notion of the “compass” and the desire to locate
ourselves in a disorienting world. Each of the rooms of the United States
Pavilion functions as an experimental site, in which objects attempt to become
instruments or assemblages that seek to measure or model the universe. The
aspiration to model complexity—and the impossibility of that undertaking—is a
key theme in Triple Point.
photograph
and copyright manfredi bellati
The United States Pavilion
Venice Biennale 2013: Giardini –
Spanish Pavilion. Lara Almarcegui
represents Spain with a large installation in the Spanish Pavilion, curated by
Octavio Zaya, which includes a research project on the island of Sacca San
Mattia on Murano.
Photograph courtesy Spanish Pavilion
Spanish Pavilion. The work of Lara Almarcegui starts from the
awareness of the city, fallow land and buildings as a starting point for
reflection on the evolution of the urban area itself and the elements that
compose it. With committed projects, which explore modern ruins, abandoned
exercise areas, the mountains of rubble through the creation of guides, maps
and brochures, Almarcegui has exhibited her work in various capitals and
participated in international contemporary art events.
Spanish Pavilion. In the pavilion, a large
sculptural installation interacts with the architecture of the building occupying
the whole interior. The intervention consists of heaps of different building
materials, corresponding to the same size and type that were used to erect the
building itself in the last century.
Spanish Pavilion. A big mountain, made up of
concrete debris, tiles and bricks turned into gravel, occupies the central
hall, making it virtually impossible to access the space. Other smaller
mountains, each made of a single material (sawdust, glass and a mixture of
steel slag and ash), are placed in the rooms perimeter, where the public can
circulate around the main heap. "The
materials come from from demolition, after being subjected to a process of
recycling, have been turned into gravel through the system of treatment of the
materials currently used in Venice," says the artist.