Venice Biennale: No Art Here

Seen around the walls of Venice. Another No Art Here poster...

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Ristorante Paradiso: Depart Foundation

Seen at Depart Foundation presents at the Ristorante Paradiso the exhibition, New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene. Pierpaolo Bazan founder of the Depart Foundation talks with Sharon Johnston and his wife Valeria. The New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene exhibition scheduled for September 16th in Rome at the MACRO Musuem, is sponsored by the Depart Foundation and will feature a tightly knit group of sixty New York-based artists whose work captures the drama, danger, speed and dynamism of New York’s diverse creative activities and reflects the leading tendencies in new art making New York today including, Street Punk, Wild Figuration and New Abstraction. The expression “a New York Minute” refers to the speed that New Yorkers react to stimuli, with a bit of impatience, a bit of ingenuity and a lot of smarts.



Seen at the lunch for the launch of New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene exhibition. The curator of the exhibition New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene, Kathy Grayson chats with the curator of the Whitney Museum, Shamin Momin.

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Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation

Photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Magazzini del sale - Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation. The new Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation opened its doors in the Magazini del Sale at the Zattere. Renzo Piano designed the exhibition space and the chief curator was Germano Celant. The space is equipped with the latest technology for conserving and showing works of art. The main aim of the Foundation is to promote the art and works of Vedova and to highlight his importance in the history of 20th century art through a series of initiatives, such as studies, research projects, analyses, exhibitions, itineraries and teaching spaces, conferences, scholarships and prizes.

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Venice Biennale: Bill Viola and Fabrizio Plessi

Photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Ca D’Oro – L’anima dell’Acqua - Contemporary Art. L’anima dell’Acqua - Contemporary Art is the exhibition at Ca d’Oro, curated by the Fondazione DNArt with with works by Fabrizio Plessi and suggestive video-installations by Bill Viola. Viola. Water is an essential element to life, a metaphor of our existence. During the centuries, philosophy, art and religion has assigned to water an important role for every spiritual manifestation. The exhibition also creates a connection between art and poetry thanks to the contribution of contemporary poets.

Seen in Campo San Polo. Seen in Campo San Polo Venetian artist, Fabrizio Plessi.

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Venice Biennale: The Union of Comoros

Basin of San Marco: The Union of Comoros. The Union of Comoros presents Djahazi a project by Paolo W. Tamburella, outside the Giardini, in the Basin of san Marco. Within his ongoing interest and research on modernity and postcolonial conditions Paolo W. Tamburella’s project addresses, indirectly and poetically, how the forced integration of national markets into the world system has led to the disappearance of national subsistence and given rise to new froms of dependency and cultural loss and erosion. He centers his project on the Djahazi, the Comoro Islands’ traditional vessels, which were used to transport slave traders in past centuries.

Contessnally tip: click on the photo to enlarge it.

Seen outside the Giardini. Paolo W. Tamburella stands in front of his Djahazi installation. He has fixed and restored the boat, but not as an antiquarian and nostalgic affectation. On the contrary, in Venice, this vessel, which is loaded with the regular shipping containers used in most of today’s trade, stands as a metaphor for the ambivalent globality, bringing together hope and despair, hyper-rationalism and avant-garde extravagance, anti-modern nostalgia and exuberant narratives of progress, emergence and emergency, in a sort of cautionary tale about the new forms of the expendable in a world of uncertainty and transition still under the sway of political and mercantile liberalism.

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Venice Biennale: John Wesley

Photograph by Manfedi Bellati

Fondazione Giorgio Cini – John Wesley. The Fondazione Prada presented a retrospective of the American artist, John Wesley in the spaces of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the Island of San Giorgio. Curated by Germano Celant, the show features the broadest, most exhaustive survey ever put together of the works of Wesley, considered one of the most interesting and enigmatic figures of the contemporary American art scene. Organized to allow a through investigation of Wesley’s complex language, the exhibition takes a historical approach, presenting over 150 different works comprising paintings and object borrowed from international museums and private collections. It documents the artist’s production from 1961- 2007.

Photograph by Manfedi Bellati
Seen at the John Wesley opening. Franca Sozzani, Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada.

Photograph by Manfedi Bellati
Seen at the John Wesley opening. The crowds at the cocktail for the opening of the John Wesley exhibition on the Island of San Giorgio.

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Venice Biennale: No Art Here

Seen around Venice. Another, No Art Here poster.

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Seen around Venice

Seen around Venice. Event’s manager of the Bundeskunsthalle Museum, Eva Mueller and author, Giannino Malossi in Corso XXII Marzo.





Seen around Venice. Singer/songwriter, Sofia Taliani in Campo Santo Stefano.




Seen around Venice. Enterpreneur, Marina Deserti in the lobby of the Hotel Bauer.

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Venice Biennale: Palazzo Papadopoli -Ukrainian Pavilion

photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Palazzo Papadopoli: Ukrainian Pavilion. The PinchukArtCentre and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine presented the Steppes of Dreamers art-project in Palazzo Papadopoli. The exhibition was Commissioned by Peter Doroshenko of the PinchukArtCentre, curated by Wladimir Klitschko and created by Illya Chichkan (Ukraine) and Mihara Yasuhiro (Japan). Life is like a film. The many things that happen and the many forms that life takes on – are of an ephemeral nature. They are all fleeting. Things, events, situations, thoughts, emotions, desires, ambitions, fears, drama…they all come, pretend to be all-important, and before you know it they are gone, dissolved into the nothingness out of which they came. Were they ever real? Were they ever more than a dream? Steppes of Dreamers, creates the opportunity for all visitors to produce their own short mental movies. Just like the title of the Biennale, Making Worlds, suggests, Steppes of Dreamers helps move all into discovering who they are in the present world.

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Venice Biennale: Palazzo Franchetti - Glasstress

Palazzo Franchetti – Glasstress. The exhibition Glasstress celebrates the use of glass in contemporary art and is being held at Palazzo Franchetti until November 22nd. The exhibition is presented by Venice Projects, an organization dedicated to presenting the work of internationally recognized artists who work with glass. Organized by Murano-based art impresario, Adriano Berengo in collaboration with Laura Mattioli Rossi and Rosa Barovier Mentasti. Glasstress represents Berengo’s dream of examining the expressive possibilities of glass by presenting a global survey and critical look at its use by modern and contemporary artists.

Above: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Glass Tires), 1997.

Palazzo Franchetti – Glasstress. Glasstress features both specially commissioned new work and selected pieces by forty-five modern and contemporary artists, many of whom are working with glass for the first time.

Above: Jan Fabre, Colombes Qui Chient Et Rats Qui Volent, 2008.

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Venice Biennale - seen on the vaporetto

The Vaporetto. The vaporetto or waterbus advertises the new exhibition space, Arsenale Nuovissimo.



Seen on the vaporetto. Art dealer ,Orio Vergani and artist, Pasquale Di Donato.

Seen on the vaporetto: detail. A detail of Pasquale Di Donato's accessories for a hot day at the Venice Biennale.





Seen on the vaporetto. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection's P.R. Alexia Boro and director, Philip Rylands.

Seen on the vaporetto. Architect, Rem Koolhaas.


Seen on the vaporetto. Another No Art Here related poster.

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Venice Biennale - Arsenale Nuovissimo

photograph by Manfredi Bellati

Arsenale Nuovissimo - Spazio Thesis 107 and 108 – Jan Fabre. Jan Fabre’s new work series From the Feet to the Brain, until September 20th, represent an important step in his work development. With five room-filling sculptural tableaus, Fabre created a mythical world of horror, beauty, and metamorphosis that was hardly conceivable in conventional artistic terms and constantly alternated between reality and dream. The installation follows the layout of the human body. Five exhibition levels with metaphoric titles borrowed from different zones of the body – starting with the feet in the basement and ending with the brain on the upper level – created a gesamtkunstwerk of mysterious complexity.
Above: The Brain. From a wooden balcony inspired by Flemish staircases Fabre offers a view of a timeless battlefield with 4 trenches leading to one big crater. In this crater we discover the skinless head of a giant. On this head stands the artist, presenting himself as a Lilliputian, digging his way through the brain, discovering not only the structural physiognomy of the face but the terra incognita of the brain. Whereas sex represents the force of the artist’s creative potential, the brain is the place where it happens. This is why Fabre regards the brain as “the most sexy part of the body.”

photograph courtesy La Biennale

Arsenale Nuovissimo - Tesa 89 – Unconditional Love. Unconditional Love is a collateral event of the Biennale and is being held in the brand new space, Arsenale Nuovissimo, until November 5th. The exhibition was organized by Buro 17 and presents a spectrum of artistic approaches to defining the essence of unbridled love. Curated by Alexandrina Markvo, Alinda Sbragia, and Christina Steinbrecher who have chosen artists from various countries and generations to trigger a spontaneous and surprising dialogue between artworks. Unconditional Love is dedicated to the egoism and the irony of love. The exhibition explores the word, and its forms of expression are in relation to the emotional and physical states of the individual, as well as those of the masses.
Above: The Feast of Trimalchio, video (digital animation) by AES+F, 2009

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Venice Biennale: Arsenale - Italian Pavilion

Italian Pavilion – The curators: Luca Beatrice and Beatrice Buscaroli. In the new Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, the “Collaudi” exhibition is being held, homage to F.T. Marinetti, curated by Beatrice Buscaroli and Luca Beatrice. Various factors underlie the choices made by the curators starting with the reasoning upon which the selection itself was based: “Not a simple selection of artists but a true exhibition responding to a specific theme, to a concept. The starting point”, continue the curators, “was the homage to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is the tutelary numen of Collaudi. It is the vitality in the present that interests us about Futurism, the first and only Italian avant-garde movement of the 20th century. A movement open to the co-existence of all the languages, from the historic ones, such as painting and sculpture, to the experimentation of art films, photography, performance and unusual materials. This vision without pre-constituted barriers is exactly what we have sought to adopt, paying close attention to the works – designed and produced for the occasion.” conclude Beatrice e Buscaroli, “ Our survey has concentrated above all on the 40-45-year-olds, adding some younger artists and other masters representing visual and cultural points of reference.”

Italian Pavilion – Sissi. La Deriva Il Nodo Della Mia Gola, enamel ceramics and iron reinforcing rod, 2009. Sissi seems to be swept away by an oceanic feeling that leads her to lose herself in chthonic nature in order to be able to flow back into it. This is a primitive instinct to return to the origins, to identify with the breath of the universe. Hence the importance she gives to the materials that in her work become prostheses of her limbs, an extension of her organism.

Italian Pavilion – Giacomo Costa. Private garden, 24 lightboxes installation, 2009. Night and day, vegetation and city ruins mingle in stifling atmospheres inhabited by sinister lights and the archaeology of a humanity only remembered through its technological decadence. Nature is back in its rightful place as legitimate mistress and vital component capable of rebirth and rising above the state of things.

Italian Pavilion – Nicola Verlato. The Beauty of Failure, oil on canvas, 2009. Nicola Verlato’s version of this Baroque style is decidedly contemporary, however, as he applies it to themes and context with which he feels an affinity, like rock music, skateboarding, and cartoons. The result is an art that is a cross between Altdorfer, Pop Art, manga, and heavy metal, in a visual arsenal of allusions that blend high culture and low culture.

Seen in the Italian Pavilion. Nicola Verlato and his sculpture The Gift, bronze, brass and marble, 2009.

Italian Pavilion – Bertozzi & Casoni. Composizione Non Finita – Infinita, polychrome ceramic, 2009. Ceramics became Bertozzi and Casoni’s material of choice, and they would never stray from it: it allowed them to shift back and forth between tradition and innovation, dismissing, often with a sizable dose of irony, all the prejudices and conformism that surrounded the applied arts in the art world. In place of a traditional artist’s studio, they preferred a factory, where they experimented with technique with their characteristic rigor and concision, in order to rethink the medium of painted ceramic sculpture.

Contessanally tip: click on the photo to enlarge it.

Italian Pavilion – Bertozzi & Casoni. A detail of Bertozzi and Casoni’s Composizione Non Finita –Infinita, polychrome ceramic, 2009.



Photograph courtesy Sergio alfredini

Italian Pavilion – Nicolo Bolla. Orpheus’s Dream, set crystals on iron mesh, 2009. Bolla’s Wunderkammern – from the German “cabinet of wonders,” the characteristics form that private collections and museums took towards the end of the Enlightenment – are made up of mirabilia, extraordinary objects both natural and artificial, that lend themselves to symbolic interpretations. Thought must dominate the work, and the construction of reality must be replaced by the dream imagination.

Seen in the Italian Pavilion. Nicolo Bolla.

photograph courtesy La Biennale

Italian Pavilion – MASBEDO. Schegge d' incanto in fondo al dubbio, 2009, video-installation on two back light screen, cm 225x400 - with Sonia Bergamasco and Ramon Tarès. Directors of staging whose cool colors clash and sturate the scene, MASBEDO or Nicolo Massazza and Jacopo Bedogni place man at the center-stage, with his nature both rational and irrational, and all his baggage existential contradiction that have been the foundation of Western Philosophy over the last two centuries: anxiety, fears, limitations, barriers, solitude and incommunicability. The frames of the artists’ epic narratives are the theatre of platonic dualism – male and female – which seeks the solution to its malaise in struggle and in the resistance against a reality that is nothing but an illusion.

Seen in the Italian Pavilion. MASBEDO or Nicolo Massazza and Jacopo Bedogni

Italian Pavilion – Daniele Galliano. Daniele Galliano’s paintings are animated by natural light and in some cases reflect the sunny alpine atmosphere of Giovanni Segantini’s pictures. Man, however, is present and establishes a dialogue with the landscape that seems simply to host him: he is no longer a central detail; he doesn’t blend with the environment but seeks to coexist with it.

Italian Pavilion – Daniele Galliano. Hic et Nunc, oil painting on canvas, 2009.

Italian Pavilion – Sandro Chia. For Sandro Chia the painterly act is an individual fact that cannot be circumscribed by definitions of any kind, since it is not hampered by the obstacles of theme and content. Thirty years after Transavanguardia the artist still possesses the power and charisma that he translated into a sign that is unique, far-removed from fashions and the risk of imitation.

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Venice Biennale: Arsenale

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Lygia Pape. Tteia I, C, 2002, installation, gold thread in square forms. Having worked in painting, printmaking, sculpture, dance, film, design, performance and installation, Lygia Pape, born 1927, was one of the most innovative artists of her times. Tteia I, C represents her late and very ambitious research into three-dimensionality. Based on experiments she begun in the late 1970s, these works are made of carefully lit gold threads appearing to be of cosmic immateriality.





Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Michelangelo Pistoletto. Twenty-two Less Two, 2009, mirrors, wood, 22 pieces. The mirror has always been an integral part of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s poetics, is the subject of inquires whose roots lie in the artist’s search for his own identity. With the first “Mirror Paintings” made in 1961 Pisoletto imagined not only a new way of conceiving the self-portrait, but also emphasized the mirror’s universality, a theme he explores also in Twenty-two Less Two.

AFTER: During the opening day of the Biennale the mirrors exposed in the Arsenale were broken by the artist during a performance.

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Sara Ramos. Quase cheio, quase vazio, 2008, digital video, double projection. Sara Ramos displaces and rearranges everyday scenes in her videos, photographs, collages, sculptures and installations. Time and again her work triggers the viewer’s imagination to complete fragmented narratives. Quase chei, quase vazio was shot in the neighborhood of Madrid where the artist spent her childhood, the empty alleys around and between brick houses appear as a stage for seemingly magical occurrences: a ball rolling, a cardboard box moving, Styrofoam flakes falling.

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Aleksandra Mir. Venezia (all places contain all others), 2009, one million postcards for distribution by Aleksandra Mir. The visitor has the fundamental role of activating Mir’s Venezia (all places contain all others) and of extending work’s confines beyond the exhibition space.
Contessnally tip: click on the image to enlarge it.

A million free postcards – of one hundred places characterized by the presence of water, on which the work “Venezia” is printed can be mailed out to the world.

Seen at the Arsenale. Dagospia blogger, Roberto D'Agostino.

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Pascale Marthine Tayou. Human Being, 2007-2009 is the title of Pascale Marthine Tayou’s installation. For Tayou, the ceaseless movement between places and contexts has become a permanent condition. The work on show evokes the architecture of a small African village, and includes representations of everyday life events from around the world, establishing new connections between forms and histories supposedly belonging to radically different cultures and places

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Renata Lucas. Venice Suitecase, 2008,2009 is the name of Brazilian artist, Renata Lucas’s installation. Lucas offers a critical interpretation of the effects of our built environment and an examination of how these structures are situated in social and behavioral relationships. The manifestations of spatial thought throughout her work provoke ideas that force us to consider the malleability of our environment, and consequently, our ability to manipulate it.

Seen at the Arsenale. Beauties, Tahilita Puri and Carlotta Testori.

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – United Arab Emirates Pavilion. The UAE Pavilion marks the first participation in the Venice Biennale by the United Arab Emirates. The pavilion is titled It’s Not You, It’s Not Me, an unconventional name for the country’s first pavilion at the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event. “By and large, art professionals around the world dismiss the notion that a pavilion can truly represent a nation.” the curator, Tirdad Zolghadr explains. “There still remains much to consider – your citizenship can still largely determine your career, and the way your art is produced, circulated and received.” The title “It’s Not You, It’s Not Me might therefore be interpreted to mean, it’s not the art that’s the problem, it’s the audience, or vice versa, or look, it’s the UAE’s turn now.” he concludes.




Venice Biennale: Arsenale – United Arab Emirates Pavilion. The exhibition entitled Familial by Lamya Gargash conisists of a series of 31 photographs, which document one-star hotels in the UAE. A number of the anonymous rooms photographed have been altered by the artist, who has added framed pictures of her own family to the décor. Through this intervention, Gargash both confronts and undermines the semi-mythical raffish reputation of places that are always nearby and yet can seem alien.

Venice Biennale: Arsenale – United Arab Emirates Pavilion. One of the 31 photographs in the Familial exhibition by Lamya Gargash. “The series plays on the aesthetics of hospitality, the politics of interior design and the disingenuous lure of documentation,” Zolghadr comments. “Although the work successfully stands on its own and for itself, the connections to the Pavilion as a whole are perceptible, and even tangible.”



Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Tamara Grcic. Gaggiandre, 2009 conists of 17 life rafts, 17 microphones and 12 loudspeakers. Tamara Grcic’s sit-specific installation looks almost as if it is set-up for a film shoot. Brightly colored life rafts drifting on the water are juxtaposed with an audio composition. The picture and the sound, though, are not directly interrelated, but as in films, the soundtrack creates a temporal dimension that sets the scene in motion.


Venice Biennale: Arsenale – Ceal Floyer. Overgrowth, 2004 is a large format slide projection/installation by artist, Ceal Floyer. Overgrowth consists of the projected image of a Bonsai tree. The British artist enlarges the manicured miniature to the scale of other trees, “rescuing” it from excessive care and returning it to a more “natural” dimension. Time and again, the artist uses literality as a conceptual tool to reveal hidden or repressed truths.

Seen on the way to the Arsenale. Russian art curators, Oleg Novikov and Masha Savelyva.
Note: her funny "Mickey Mouse" sunglasses.

Seen on the way to the Arsenale. Pakistani artist, Maimuna Feroze Nana, whose performance below attracted a lot of attention explains her art "My work is based on two main themes. Hands: a holy symbol in Islam with embroidered holy words, or mirrors, the mystic’s search for mirroring the Absolute. They become minor symbols of consumerism and bondage in works like “Heineken”. Figures: mostly of women from my family, those who worked in our homes and women I’ve known in the West who have been hurt by injustice, by society, religion, family and prejudices. Bleeding, healing and waiting."

Seen on the way to the Arsenale. In the streets of Venice a performance by Pakistani artist, Maimuna Feroze Nana. A group of three women dressed with the Burqa, the cultural symbol of masses of Muslim women, which today has become in many countries the symbol of enclosure and of the rights denied to women. Silently they stand and symbolically represent women with no voices.

Seen on the way to the Arsenale. Cotto Veneto's Armando Sutor, who also organized the Maimuna happening in Venice and took the photos for the press information sheet.



Seen on the way to the Arsenale. Christie's, Paola Gradi.



Seen on the way to the Arsenale. Patron of the Arts, Jenny and Roderick Hall.

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