Venice: Biennale Arte - 2019 – Giardini – PART TWO - National Pavilions: Korea – Poland – Romania – Russia – Switzerland – U.S.A. - Venezia

Venice – International Art Biennale 2019

Giardini – PART TWO

National Pavilions

Korea – Poland – Romania – Russia

Switzerland – U.S.A. - Venezia

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/national-participations

  Republic of Korea Pavilion

History Has Failed Us, but No Matter - Hwayeon Nam - siren eun young jung - Jane Jin Kaisen

Commissioner - Arts Council Korea.
Curator - Hyunjin Kim

“History has failed us, but no matter.”

Min Jin Lee

from the novel Pachinko

Who canonised the formation of history and whose bodies are yet to be written about as part of that history? What would come to us if we revisited the solid strata of East Asian myths around the region’s modernisation and nationalistic history through a critical lens of gender diversity? These are the questions addressed by the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter, with new works by three women artists — siren eun young jung, Hwayeon Nam, and Jane Jin Kaisen — on display at the Korea Pavilion. Critically revisiting and unfolding heterogeneous narratives of the past century’s history of East Asian modernisation, the exhibition stages the veiled, the forgotten, the abandoned, the condemned, and the unvoiced in the spotlight.

Hwayeon Nam – Dancer from the Peninsula

video installation - 2019

www.korean-pavilion.or.kr/

Republic of Korea Pavilion

siren eun young jung

A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity and Noise

Video installation - 2019

 Poland Pavilion

Flight - Roman Stanczak

Commissioner - Hanna Wroblewska
Curators - Lukasz Mojsak - Lukasz Ronduda

Flight is Roman Stanczak’s extraordinary Surrealist sculpture: an inside-out luxury private aircraft. It manifests the strategy the artist has applied since his debut in the 1990s. His works, emerging from the margins of the then-nascent Polish Critical art, relied on the deformation of objects, turning them inside out or removing their external layer to launch a game with the meanings attributed to them. Flight is a monument to the paradoxes of modernity and a commentary on Polish capitalist transformation. The inside-out private aircraft used by the so-called 1%, the rich élite, is a metaphor for the reverse of the modernisation processes, a commentary on inequalities, problems with redistribution, resentment, and populism.

www.labiennale.art.pl/

 

Romania Pavilion

Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence
Belu-Simion Fainaru - Dan Mihaltianu, Miklos Onucsan

Commissioner - Attila Kim
Curator - Cristian Nae

“Take a rose petal, make a wish, and insert it in the hole in the wall...”
Belu-Simion Fainaru – Monument for Nothingness

Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence focuses on three individual art projects conceived by artists belonging to the ‘1980s generation’ in Romania: Belu Simion Fainaru, Dan Mihaltianu and Miklos Onucsan, who often emphasised the processual, conceptual, and dialogical qualities of art. These installations are contemporary versions of historically significant art projects, which resume and evoke nomadic artistic trajectories. Through the conjunction of experimental documentary pieces and poetic heterotopic spaces, which suspend, displace, or disperse the notion of locality, the selected pieces disruptively approach the notion of national representation by revealing absences fissuring its core.

www.unfinishedconversations.ro/

Belu-Simion Fainaru
artist

Romania Pavilion
Belu-Simion Fainaru – You Have Always to Start Anew
wood – washing machines – clothes – water – soap – mattress - embroidery  2019

photograph and copyright – manfredi bellati

Romania Pavilion
Dan Mihaltianu  
Canal Grande:The Capital Pool and the Associated Public (part1)
Vinyl pond liner, water coins, variable dimensions – 2019

Russia Pavilion
Lc 15:11-32 - Alexander Sokurov - Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai
Commissioner - Semyon Mikhailovsky
Curator - Mikhail Piotrovsky

Lc. 15:11-32. The exhibition takes its name from the Gospel of Luke and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Rembrandt’s painting on this theme has become the greatest masterpiece in the Hermitage’s collection. It is also the central theme of an installation for the Russian Pavilion by the famous film director Alexander Sokurov, simultaneously representing one of the museum’s most famous halls and an artist’s studio, whose windows look out onto the turmoil and war surrounding the modern world. The inner staircase sends us down into the world of the Flemish School, brought to life by the artist Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai and dedicated to the intricate mechanisms in the Winter Palace such as the famous Peacock clock. 

Alexander Sokurov - Lc. 15:11-32.
www.ruspavilion.com/

 

Russia Pavilion
Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai - Flemish School

 

Russia Pavilion
Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai - Flemish School
mechanical ballet – installation

  Seen in the Giardini
Kiki Smith

 

Switzerland Pavilion
Moving Backwards – Pauline Boudry - Renate Lorenz
Commissioner - Swiss Arts Council Pro-Helvetia:
Marianne Burki, Sandi Paucic, Rachele Giudici Legittimo
Curator - Charlotte Laubard

In an era of massive withdrawal, the exhibition explores the resistance practices that combine guerrilla techniques, postmodern choreography and urban dance, as well as elements of queer underground culture. In a large film installation, visitors are invited to enter a dense choreography generated by performers’ gestures, film loops, and animated objects. In the environment of an abstract nightclub, the sensory experience is complemented by a moment of reflection on these backlashes, with letters written to the audience by a dozen authors and published in a newspaper.

www.prohelvetia.ch/

www.biennals.ch/

 

  Photograph courtesy Swiss Pavilion

Switzerland Pavilion
Pauline Boudry - Renate Lorenz - Moving Backwards
installation with film – 2019

Switzerland Pavilion
Moving Backwards – Pauline Boudry - Renate Lorenz

Charlotte Laubard
curator

Photograph courtesy Swiss Pavilion

Switzerland Pavilion
Pauline Boudry - Renate Lorenz, Moving Backwards
installation with film, curtain, stage, bar, publication and performances 2019 – detail

 

 U.S.A. Pavilion
Martin Puryear: Liberty - Martin Puryear
Commissioner/Curator - Brooke Kamin Rapaport

With this exhibition in the US Pavilion, Martin Puryear has said that he represents his country as both an artist and a citizen. This position is not a discovery for those who know the artist and his work. Puryear’s enduring approach has galvanised his sculpture made by hand in the studio for more than five decades: issues of allegiance, democracy, and liberty have long propelled him. Viewers can learn how an artist’s treatment of a symbolic but tangible human subject – namely, liberty – can be best expressed in sculptural form through an abstract visual language of great originality and certitude.

www.martinpuryearvenice2019.org/

U.S.A. Pavilion
Martin Puryear: Liberty - Martin Puryear

 

U.S.A. Pavilion
Martin Puryear: Liberty - Martin Puryear

 

U.S.A. Pavilion
Martin Puryear: Liberty - Martin Puryear

Photograph - copyright and courtesy Fondaco Italia

Venezia Pavilion

Corpo Reale

Sidival Fila - Fabio Viale - Ferzan Ozpetek - Plastique Fantastique
Lorenzo Dante Ferro - Mirko Borsche - Giorgos Koumendakis

Commissioner - Maurizio Carlin - Curator – Giovanna Zabotti

Concept - Art Directors - Stelios Kois - Alessandro Gallo

A group of seven international artists with strong creative ties to the Italian art scene were selected to represent the city itself in the Venezia Pavilion. The works transcend the confines of a pavilion and infiltrate the city beyond. The concept of the exhibition is inspired by the urban fabric of the city, exploring its history and mythology. Through an immersive environment, the artists aim to capture the essence of Venice through the elements that over time have become symbols associated with the city - sacred images, boats, bricole, chains and water - and the use of materials that characterize it such as stone, marble, wood, rope and fabric.

Ferzan Ozpetek – Venetika

www.comune.venezia.it/

  Photograph - copyright and courtesy Fondaco Italia

Venezia Pavilion

 Water Tunnel

 

Giovanna Zabotti

Curator

Alessandro Gallo

Co-art director

Photograph - copyright and courtesy Fondaco Italia

 

 Venezia Pavilion

Mirko Borsche

Inspired by the traditional symbol of Venice - the lion of San Marco - the abstract yellow neon motif designed by Borsche infiltrates the spaces and everyday objects throughout the city, including Palazzo Ca' da Mosto, above, on the Canal Grande, the luxury hotel currently undergoing restoration works.