52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Saturday 9^th June – Galleria Marina Barovier: Laura de Santillana – Khadi. Another exhibition not to be missed is Laura de Santillana’s sculpture exhibition, entitled Khadi, at the Galleria Marina Barovier, until September 30^th. The only proof of mystery is the unique clarity of the object inside which a sprit momentarily inhabited. These words by Cristina Campo seem to have been written for Laura’s work. Fragments, or complete sets of forms, shine in the vitreous liquidity of glass-like metallic spines, rippled copper weaves, bronze and brass remnants resembling archeological textures belonging to regal cloaks, sumptuous and delicate remains of vestments float and dance.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Saturday 9^th June – Palazzo Querini Stampalia Onlus – Croatian Pavilion – Ivana Franke. The Coratian Pavilion is situated on the ground floor of the Palazzo Querini Stampalia Onlus, restructured in the 1960’s by renowned Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa. I loved this installation; I thought it was very elegant and pleasing to the eye. Ivana Franke’s site specific installation comprises of light, sound and objects aiming to emphasize fragile and subtle interpretation of three Venetian trademarks: canals, architecture and interior gardens, interlocking within Carlo Scarpa’s masterpiece. Franke’s vision includes all of the Area Scarpa’s characteristics, from visual and spatial interaction of water, stone and grass, to more poetic rendering of uncontrollable acqua alta(above) sweeping over the defined stonework artistry toward the lush greenery of the courtyard.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th – Palazzo Grassi: Seen at the Gucci – L’Uomo Vogue Party. Bi-continental PR, Karla Otto arrives at Palazzo Grassi by private motor boat for the Gucci, L’Uomo Vogue Party with Viktor and Rolf. The Dutch fashion designers were looking forward to viewing the German and Canadian Pavilions at the Biennale.

Seen at Palazzo Grassi at the Gucci – L’Uomo Vogue Party. Stella Keseava, wife of the Russian tobacco tycoon, Igor Kesaeva. Besides being a patron of contemporary art in Moscow she also started the Stella Art Foundation. Stella’s favorite exhibition at the Biennale was the Joseph Kosuth installation on the Island of San Lazzaro, see below.

Seen arriving at Palazzo Grassi for the Gucci - L’Uomo Vogue Party. Famous Italian singer, Ornella Vanoni. She is wearing a beautiful pleated organza iridescent wrap by Gualti.

Seen outside Palazzo Grassi: Visionaire’s Giorgio Pace and jewelry designer, Antonia Miletto waiting for the last vaporetto, they are looking at the special Biennale issue of L’Uomo Vogue. Antonia has just opened a small jewelry boutique near Palazzo Grassi in the calle Salizzada Malipiero, note her turquoise earings.

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Friday 8^th June – Giardini: Venice Pavilion – Tribute to Emilio Vedova. The Venice Pavilion reopened with a great exhibition, a tribute to the late Emilio Vedova. German artist, Georg Baselitz painted a series of black and white paintings exhibited around a superb single round gigantic sculpture painting by the Italian abstract painter, Emilio Vedova, entitled, Senza Titolo (als ob) it represents the expressive maturity of the artist’s language and the Golden Lion (1997) to his career.

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Friday 8^th June – Seen in the Giardini. Beautiful, Margherita Missoni, flew in from New York for a special guided and selected tour by her mother Angela during the Biennale. One of their favorite Pavilions was the British Pavilion. In fact, Angela Missoni gave a pre-Biennale party on their barge Timoteo for Emin. To view the party photos scroll down, down.

Friday 8^th June – Giardini: British Pavilion – Tracey Emin – Borrowed Light. Tracey Emin’s exhibition in the British Pavilion includes works specially made for the Biennale. Using a variety of media including embroidery, drawing, painting and neon, Emin’s uniquely intimate form of emotional realism shines through in Borrowed Light. From smudgy monoprints to lightly painted oils and watercolors, Emin interprets moments in her life with an astonishing urgency, much of it describing how it feels to be a body taken over by feeling; exhilarating, frightening, embarrassing confusing, disabling and empowering. Commenting on the exhibition, Emin said: “The chance to exhibit at the Venice Biennale is a great honor and has helped me to redefine what my work really means to me. Borrowed Light is my most feminine body of works so far, very sensual but at the same time it is graphically sharp. It is both pretty and hardcore. For me, as an artist, what’s important is to cover everything from the emotional to the literal, and sometimes that means I give myself a very hard time.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Giardini: Italian Pavilion – Antonio Spanedda and Aurelio Gentile – Artista Confezionati, Performance. Antonio Spanedda and Aurelio Gentile, after ten years from their first exhibition propose to the public of the 52^nd Venice Biennale the performance, Manufactured Artists. The event was sponsored by the Brera Aacademy of Fine Arts. They were looking at veteran artist, Louise Bourgeois’s untitled series of seventy-four drawings.

A detail: one of Louise Bourgeois’s seventy-four untitled drawings, 2005.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Seen outside the giardini. Super designer, William Sawaya and Paolo Moroni of Sawaya and Moroni fame. Their favorite Pavilion was the Russian Pavilion

Friday 8^th June – Giardini: Russian Pavilion - AES+F – Last Riot. Last Riot is a video installation by Andrey Bartenev, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes or AES+F. In a fantasy landscape where time is suspended, past epochs exist alongside future ones, and creation mingles with destruction - is populated by glamorous, androgynous teenagers. To the music of Wagner, these youths struggle in a war against themselves, a war without difference between aggressor and victim, male and female, good and bad, fate and free will. The heroes of this cyber-epic are doomed to eternal battle. It is a battle without blood or pain, contact without contact. Each generation creates its own tale of apocalypse in music, painting and other forms of art. Last Riot is a post-apocalyptic vision that has come to replace them.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8th June - Seen between the Arsenale and the Giardini. Italian painter and sculptor, Lucio del Pezzo. Del Pezzo’s favorite artists in the Biennale are the Kabakovs. “Their work is a fantastic project on Russian history.” He told me.

photograph courtesy La Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Arsenale: Think with the Senses – Feel with the mind. Art in the Present Tense – Ilya and Emilia Kabakov - Manas. Russian artists based in New York, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s installation entitled Manas consists of a series of models of mountains observatories ostensibly designed to collect cosmic energy, special dreams, views of alien civilizations, etc. Like most of the Kabakovs’ sculptural tableaux, the work has a pleasing tone of Russian absurdist literature. Writes Walter Robinson for Artnet.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June - Seen at the Sperone Westwater dinner at Ca Rezzonico in honor of Guillermo Kuitca. Argentinan artist, Guillermo Kuitca (right) stops on his way into dinner to pose with Robert Storr and his family. Kuitca not only represents Argentina in the Argentian Pavilion but also participates in the Arsenale exhibiton curated by Robert Storr. Storr is the first director from the United States in more than one hundred years of the Biennale exhibition. The theme this year is Think with the Senses – Feel with the mind. Art in the Present Tense. The exhibition presents more than one hundred artists, from all over the world with many site-specific works and new productions created for this particular exhibition with the collaboration of the Biennale di Venezia.

Friday 8^th June – Arsenale: Think with the Senses – Feel with the mind. Art in the Present Tense – Guillermo Kuitca. Guillermo Kuitca’s diaries. Shown above one of the walls of the thirty-eight canvases from the artist’s “Diarios” series, which began in 1994 and continue to the present.

A detail; of one of the Kuitca Diarios, mixed media on canvas, diameter:120cm, depth: 4cm.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June - Seen at the Giardini, Empress Farah Pahlavi. Farah Diba has always been interested in art; she is a promoter of art and women emancipation. Her favorite artist in the Biennale is El Anatsui.

Friday 8^th June – Arsenale: Think with the Senses – Feel with the mind. Art in the Present Tense – El Anatsui. El Anatsui is one of Africa’s foremost contemporary artists of his generation. His gigantic wall hangings are made from thousands of pieces of re-cycled materials. Anatsui weaves the debris of consumer excess into monumental tapestries in the tradition of West African textiles, subverting notions of tradition and modernity and prompting us to re-examine what makes up the fabric of our lives.

A Detail: of El Anatsui tapestry, entitled Ducasa I made with discarded aluminum and copper Wire, stitching.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Seen at the Arsenale. Armani’s U.K. ambassador Lady Helen Taylor was doing the rounds with her husband, art dealer, Tim Taylor. Her favorite pavilions were, Great Britain, Canada and Russia.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Arsenale: Italian Pavilion – Giuseppe Penone – Lymph Sculptures. The new Italian Pavilion reopens after eight years of absence with two very different artists, yet their basic purpose is the same: to create forms of art that are valid as a critical understanding of existence, of all that forms part of our experience. Curator Ida Gianelli explains her choice “Giusppe Penone has forty years’ work behind him, with extensive experience of the avant-garde, first in the Arte Povera movement and then while following out his own individual paths. Vezzoli is a thirty-five-year-old artist who has rapidly won an international reputation without leaving his country to live elsewhere.

Giuseppe Penone’s Lymph Sculptures is an installation developed for this venue, consisting of very large wood and marble sculptures as well as drawings. Penone describes it thus: “Spaces covered by hands, spaces emptied by hands. The sculpture space is filled with lymph. The hand flux flows on the tree rind, revealing the form of wood and the veins of marble.”

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Friday 8^th June – Arsenale: Italian Pavilion – Francesco Vezzoli - Democrazy. Ida Gianelli, the curator of the Italian Pavilion writes. “Vezzoli’s project conceived for the Italian Pavilion enlarges the analysis of contemporary system of communication to include the great spectacle of politics, and in particular the veritable construction of a character and a world view in the form of electoral propaganda. Entitled Democrazy, the video installation, draws on the forthcoming United States presidential elections for 2008. It presents two fictitious politicians, the result of collaboration between the artist and two important groups of ‘media advisors’, professional experts in American politics. The candidates, Patricia Hill and Patrick Hill, interpreted by famous personalities, true media stars, in a mere sixty seconds debate their different political visions and in doing so reveal how the strategies of communication deprive words of any real meaning and transform everything into a great media show.”

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June - Marie and Brandino Brandolini’s party for Lilli Doriguzzi. Seen at Marie and Brandino Brandolini’s party for Lilli Doriguzzi, French actress, Ariel Dombasle and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy. BHL is one of the stars of Francesco Vezzoli’s video Democrazy shown in the new Italian Pavilion at the Arsenale. In a triumph of pure spectacle, Democrazy sets Sharon Stone against Bernard-Henri Levy, celebrities whose names and faces are part of the collective imagination. In Political Advertisement for the Election of Bernard-Henri Levy as Patrick Hill, Levy takes on the role of the candidate supported by a network of international relationships, someone skilled at forming alliances with political, religious and cultural figures. In Political Advertisement for the Election of Sharon Stone as Patricia Hill, the other video that makes up the installation, Stone plays the well-to-do candidate, possibly representing powerful forces, demagogically poised to seek direct contact with the public on the occasion of her electoral campaign.

Seen at Marie and Brandino Brandolini’s party for Lilli Doriguzzi, Mario Testino toasts his host and hostess Marie and Brandino Brandolini d’Adda with Marie’s glasses designed for lagunaB and filled with Caipirinhas.

The entrance of the Brandolini’s apartment was transformed for the evening into an art gallery showing the works of Lilli Doriguzzi. The exhibition was entitled Passing By.

Seen at Marie and Brandino Brandolini’s party for Lilli Doriguzzi, Simona Gandolfi and her “mother-in-law” Ira Von Fustenberg.

Seen at Marie and Brandino Brandolini’s party for Lilli Doriguzzi, Rolf and Maryam Sachs. Rolf Sachs is an “infamous” minimalist designer and his work covers furniture, interiors and architecture. Together with his wife, Maryam they produced a beautiful picture book, entitled The Wild Emperor where a stationary camera, over a period of a year captured, every 10.5 minutes, the Wild Kaiser range of mountains outside their house Austria.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

photograph courtesy Haunch of Venison

Thursday 7^th June – Opening San Gallo Church; Bill Viola – Ocean Without a Shore. Bill Viola's major new work was presented at the Biennale, it is entitled Ocean Without a Shore, 2007 (until November 24^th), the three-screen High Definition video and sound installation was inspired by it’s setting – the 15^th century church of San Gallo. Ocean Without a Shore presents a cyclical progression of images that describes a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death. Located near the Piazza San Marco the church was formerly a private chapel, and Viola directly incorporates the internal architecture into his piece, using the three existing stone altars as video screens. The video sequence describes the human form as it gradually coalesces from within a dark field and slowly comes into view, moving from obscurity into the light. As the figure approaches, it becomes more solid and tangible until it breaks through an invisible threshold and passes into the physical world. The crossing of the threshold is an intense moment of infinite feeling and acute physical awareness.

Seen at the Opening: Bill Viola and Kira Perov. Of the work Viola states “It is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in San Gallo become transparent surfaces for the manifestation of images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world."

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – Museo Correr: Opening Enzo Cucchi Exhibition. With this large retrospective show, until October 7^th, at the Museo Correr in Piazza San Marco, the Musei Civici Veneziani celebrates the work of Enzo Cucchi. Cucchi is one of the most significant contemporary Italian artists. The carefully designed exhibition contains a selection of works and cycles of paintings produced in the period from the late 1970s to the present day. Over one hundred paintings and drawings come from important museums from all over the world. Charting the full range of Enzo Cucchi’s work from the period when he first made his appearance on the international art stage, they reveal the extraordinary variety and richness of his art.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – I Giardini: at the American Pavilion – Felix Gonzalez-Torres – America. The day started sunny, so, no need to take one of the two raincoats or one of the four umbrellas from the apartment. Around midday, it poured and poured and it was so uncomfortable I was wet through and covered in mud that I went home. This was the first Biennale opening that I remember, over the past twenty years or so, that it rained. The Two Circular Pools of Water installation by Felix Gonzalez-Torres outside the American Pavilion certainly didn’t need filling up. The late Cuban-born American citizen, Gonzalez-Torres is best known for his immensely generous yet rigorously conceptual art in the form of endlessly replenishable paper stacks, take-away candy spills (see below), light strings, beaded curtains and public billboards. With its minimalist refinement and quiet referentiality, his work treads a fine line between social commentary and personal disclosure, equivocating between two realms and obscuring the culturally-determined distinctions that separate them.

A detail: "Untitled" (Public Opinion), 1991: Black rod liquorice candies individually wrapped in cellophane, endless supply. Overall dimensions vary with installation. Ideal weight: 317.5 Kg. These were much enjoyed by the public especially around lunch time.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – I Giardini: at the Korean Pavilion – Hyungkoo Lee – The Homo Species. Born and raised in Korea Hyungkoo Lee experienced ‘undersized Asian male complex’ while he was studying in the US. An Asian man having internalized the notion of male-superiority is doomed to be frustrated when he comes face-to-face with his ‘bigger and stronger’ Caucasian counterpart. Lee started to create The Objectuals Series in 1999 with humble materials such as water-filled PET bottles and shooter glasses to visually enlarge parts of his body. Especially the Helmets (see above), an on going series, combines his interest in physiognomy with optical instruments to exaggerate which might be called ‘self-satisfaction devices’, function as pseudo-medical instruments for plastic surgery, as well as psychological therapy to heal the artist’s mental complex.

The Animatus Series. Lee also extends his concerns to fictitious bodies of cartoon characters by inventing their fossil bones in quasi-archaeological way. He turns fiction into history through his anatomical studies and imaginations. The resulted Animatus Series, attributed to the tradition of Pop Art, can be seen as the epitome of simulation in providing plausible physical references and zoological nomenclatures to fictional characters. And the familiar Hollywood cartoon figures (i.e. Tom and Jerry) caught at a critical moment create dramatic scenes in the palaeontological fossil skeletons.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – I Giardini: at the Canadian Pavilion – David Altmejd – The Index. The commission created by David Altmejd for the Biennale consists of two works, both toying with the Pavilion’s notable peculiarities of an aviary, imagining it as a shelter where birds can safely nest and feed. The Index chimes with this particular resonance, highlighting the architectural philosophy of planting a building organically in its natural settings; that of the Giardini Pubblici. The work is made up of various structures of wood steel and mirror glass, interconnected and assembled. They are inhabited by flocks of stuffed birds and squirrels, fabricated from materials at hand and fragmented bodies – half-human, half-avian – the whole richly ornamented with tree sections and quartz crystals. The Giant 2 is an imposing 5.5 meter sculpture, attended by all manner of stuffed and sculpted birds.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – I Giardini: at the French Pavilion – Sophie Calle – Prenez Soin de Vous. “I received an email telling me it was over. I didn’t know how to answer. It was as if it wasn’t meant for me. It ended with the words: Take care of yourself. I took this recommendation literally. I asked a hundred and two women, chosen for their profession, to interpret the letter in their professional capacity. To analyze it, provide a commentary on it, act it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Squeeze it dry. Understand for me. Answer for me. It was a way to take the time to break up. At my own pace. A way to take care of myself.” Sophie Calle explains her beautiful exhibition.

Seen at the Chanel Dinner at Palazzo Polignac. French actress, Jeanne Moreau and French artist, Sophie Calle, were the guests of honor at the Chanel dinner, one of the official sponsors of the French Pavilion. The Palazzo was beautifully decorated by renowned Venetian architect and designer, Matteo Corvino, the stunning table center pieces were vases, candle holders and leaves of various sizes made from transparent Murano hand-blown glass that glowed in the candle light.

Contessanally tip: click on the photograph to enlarge. Pin It

52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Thursday 7^th June – I Giardini: Illycaffe, Push Button House. I will always be grateful, and that is the reason why I write about Illy, fourth time sponsor to La Biennale, because I really appreciate a shot of caffeine, especially when I’m tired or running around all day. To greet you at the entrance of the Giardini is the Push Button House designed by artist-architect Adam Kalkin for Illycaffe. With the simple press of a button, the unit, a cube, transforms itself from compact container into a fully furnished and functional space, complete with W.C., opening like a flower. Quite wonderful and the coffee is not only good, but also free.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Wednesday 6^th June – Palazzetto Tito, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa: Richard Hamilton “A Host of Angels”. The Richard Hamilton exhibition, A Host of Angels, until October 8^th, occupies the whole of Palazzetto Tito. Along with thirteen paintings there are pieces of furniture and objects that relate to the paintings. Opening the show are portraits of his friends Dieter Roth and Derek Jarman, further on, a graphic interpretation of a domestic scene of a naked lady vacuuming a sitting room called, Hotel du Rhone, 2003, which resembles his famous work, Just What is it that Makes Today’s Home so Different, so Appealing?, which is considered to be the first pop piece, because of it’s many references to pop culture and consumerism. Since the 1990s he has moved on from portraying pop icons to more intimate works, such as, the Angels series, exhibited in Venice, of friends, private situations and the interior of his own home. Shown above: Passage of the Angel to the Virgin, digital print on canvas, 2006-2007.

The star of the show. Richard Hamilton, also know as the "Granddaddy" of pop art, sits comfortably on the sofa and receives his guests. Hamilton was awarded the Golden Lion, when he represented Great Britain at the 1993 Venice Biennale.

Seen at the Richard Hamilton opening. Jos and Joe Tilson. Famous British pop artist Joe Tilson and his wife Jos came to support their long time friend Richard Hamilton.

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Wednesday 6^th June – Island of San Lazzaro: Joseph kosuth “The Lanuage of Equilibrium”. What a wonderful sight, when you arrive by boat and see the writing lit in neon on the sides of the walls and the church of the monastic headquarters of the Mekhitarian Order on the Island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni. Joseph Kosuth’s installation entitled The Language of Equilibrium, until November 21^st, is amazing, Kosuth explains his project “This project in yellow neon, has as its basis language itself. It is a work which is both a reflection on its own construction, as well as, on the history and culture of its location. This work is comprised of words from Armenian, Italian and English language. Language here is used as a signifier of the history of the project of the Mekhitarian Order. Yellow neon is chosen for this work because of the symbolic understanding of yellow at the time of the founding of the monastery as meaning ‘virtue, intellect, esteem and majesty.”

Seen at the Joseph Kosuth opening. Installation curator, Adelina Von Furstenberg, center, talks to Art Press’s editor in chief, Myriam Salomon and Kosuth’s Parisian gallery owner Almine Rech-Picasso of Gallerie Almine Rech. At the invitation of Adeline Von Furstenberg, the founder of ART for The World, Joseph Kosuth with this mystical installation has intervened on different parts of the island. This is one of the best installations in the whole Biennale it is not to be missed, especially when it’s dark.

A view of the observatory wall. American aritist, Jospeh Kosuth is one of the pioneers of conceptual art and installation art. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art

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52nd Venice International Art Biennale

Wednesday 6^th June – Palazzo Malipiero: Patrick Mimran “New York Parkings”. Though French-born multidisciplinary artist, Patrick Mimran is better know for his billboards, placed strategically either in Chelsea, New York, or on the international art circuit. His photographic exhibition, at Palazzo Malipiero called, New York Parkings (until November 21^st), a series of gigantic entrances to many parking garages in New York, taken from the same prospective is really worth a visit. They are slick, colorful and make an impact.

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