REPORT

VENICE BIENNALE
THE VENICE BIENNALE
Death
and
Disney
War, politics and death are all firmly
on the agenda at this year's Biennale
- but av^ay from the Pavilions are
some colourful and quixotic delights
WRI TER CATHERINE MILNER
Installation view at the Palazzo Pisani
showing a detail of At Fault, 2011
Karia Black (b. 1972)
Cellophane, paint, Sellotape, plaster
powder, powder paint, sugar paper,
chalk, bath bombs, ribbon, wood
Dimensions variable
KarIa Black and Galerie
Gisela Capitain
Photo: Gautier Deblonde
For the first time in living memory, art about
sex is eclipsed by art about wars, revolution
and misery at the 54th International Venice
Biennale. The Belgian Pavilion, curated by
Luc Tuymans, resounds to the roar of fighter
jets and is overrun with paintings of blood,
making it the most conspicuous example of
the genre - but it is also in the upturned tank
stationed outside the American Pavilion (Fig.
3), and in the terrifying swell of a tsunami in
the Japanese exhibit.
Not since Guernica or Goya has art been
so political. Only in the Italian Pavilion do
classical nudes prevail, but everywhere else,
it seems, the Grim Reaper in his various guises
predominates. At least three of the Pavilions
feature work by artists who have actually died
- slightly unusual given that countries included
in the Biennale are usually represented by a
working artist.
Outside the Giardini and Arsenale,
however, in the big exhibitions being held in
the Palazzi - Grassi, Fortuny and the Prada
Foundation - life, it seems, carries on pretty
much as normal, basking in the sun-baked
tranquillity of the art of yesteryear, or even
just last year.
This wind of change has moved at a
tremendous speed. Put Tracey Emin's work on
show in this year's Biennale and it would have
looked solipsistic in the extreme, as much as
Karla Black's hunks of transparent soap and
mounds of plaster (representing Scotland and
nominated for the Turner Prize) look like jelly
and ice cream (Fig. 1), compared to the grit
and anguish elsewhere.
Take Mike Nelson, who has disembowelled
the neo-classical British Pavilion and filled it
with a TXirkish caravanserai full of filth and
squalor (see pp. 24-26). 'Of course my work is
political - but about the politics ofthe East not
the West,' says Nelson. 'I hope it brings up the
question of the shift East in terms of labour
and the economy.'
Nelson took the roof off the elegant,
Palladian-style building and created a court-
yard in its centre, around which he cleverly
constructed seven windowless workshops
(the original building upon which this work
is based has 80). There is one for making
chandeliers; another for weaving. One is a
photographic darkroom filled with black and
white photographs of Istanbul taken by the
artist; another, a 'squatter' loo. Each is a site
20 APOLLO JULY/AUGUST 2011
REPORT
VENICE BIENNALE
2 Installation in the German Pavilion of
A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within
Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010)
Altar view with film projection
Photo; Roman Mensing
3 Track and Field, 2011
Allora & Calzadilla (b. 1974 and 1971)
Olympic gold medallist Dan O'Brien
performing outside the American Pavilion
Presented by Indianapolis Museum of Art
Photo: Andrew Bordwin
of despair; dirty mattresses, empty petrol
cans, soiled rags covering televisions that are
never switched off. Were it not for the fragrant
whiff of fresh cement, you might almost
believe you were in this dismal tomb of
bygone industry.
Next door, in the German Pavilion, the
smell one expects is of incense, for the
building has been turned into a Catholic
church, resplendent in red velvet and gold,
blaring Wagner and the Ave Maria (Fig. 2).
Built from a previous installation made by
Christoph Schlingensief is A Cfturch of Fear
vs. the Alien Within, and in the chancel is a
hospital bed (the artist died from lung cancer
last year), and on the altar a hare, a symbol of
suffering. On a screen above the altar is a film
ofa blood-sucking bat.
One can hear Schlingensief tearfully
speaking of his terror before his death, and on
a screen are typed snippets of conversations
that hint at the misunderstandings illness can
bring. 'Dear Christoph - you promised to call.
Bye child,' reads one bitter exchange.
This requiem to the dead artist, rebuilt by
his widow Aino Laberenz and friends, won the
Lion d'Or award at Venice this year and it is
easy to see why. The artist's struggle between
his belief in God - he had been an altar boy as
a child - and the gore of his demise, gives it a
Caravaggioesque splendour.
On to the Arsenale, where a host of
Far- and Middle-Eastern Pavilions seem to be
using art to assuage the perception of their
governments as despotic regimes. The Syrian
Pavilion features works by Europeans and is
curated by an Italian; the Chinese Pavilion
billows a mist smelling of green tea to
obfuscate, one assumes, the stench of the
artist and activist Ai Weiwei's detention.
Best in show is the Saudi Arabian
Pavilion; it features a sculpture about Mecca
made by two sisters, born and brought up
in the holy city and daughters of the keeper
of its sacred well. From a country where
women are not even allowed to drive, the
work, which also explores the notion and
associations of the colour black, is both brave
and extraordinary. A 24-foot-long panel
covered in black cloth has, on its other side,
a bright and twinkling face - the inference
being that you travel through a vale of
darkness to reach enlightenment or
illumination (the theme of this year's
JULY/AUGUST 2011 APOLLO 21
REPORT
VENICE BIENNALE
Biennale). It also references the Ka'aba, the
semi-cubic holy temple covered in black that
is Mecca's spiritual centre, towards which the
Muslim faithful turn to pray.
Heading away from the Pavilions towards
St Mark's Square and the Palazzi one enters
a very different zone - all Californian cheer
and sunshine. Jeff Koons dominates the atrium
of the Palazzo Grassi - his huge dog made of
pink balloons stands next to a totem pole
reaching up to the sky by Joana Vasconcelos
(Fig. 4). Over the Ponte dell'Accademia,
Pinault's other showroom on the Punta Delia
Dogana has the best exhibition of American
(and international) art in town. A stuffed
horse by Maurizio Cattelan and a band of
pirates by Paul McCarthy vie with some
limpid pools of glass by Roni Horn that look
so like water you have to resist trailing your
finger in them.
The Prada Foundation, housed in an
18th-century palazzo that was, until recently,
occupied by monks, displays the collection of
Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, owners
of the global fashion brand. It is an eclectic
mix of everything from Meissen porcelain
figurines of swans and pigs, to videos showing
the first sexual fumblings of a pair of American
teenagers. Much of the modern and contemp-
orary art.- Fontana, Judd, Hirst - is, however,
dwarfed by a magnificent sweep of 18th-
century frescoes on the piano nobile of a
weeping Queen (nobody there knew who she
was) attending her husband's coronation.
Nearby is the Palazzo Fortuny, with an
exhibition that feels like one vast cabinet of
curiosities; some glass human organs here,
a dress made of peacock feathers there. Most
compelling are a set of rock handbags, straight
from the set of The Flintstones. I'm sure they
aren't that really, but as there are no labels to
let you know what you are looking at in much
of the museum, you can let your imagination
run riot.
Last is a show celebrating the birth of the
Los Angeles art scene. Perhaps it is the rich
rococo of the building in which it is shown,
but apart from some jewelled resin prisms by
Peter Alexander and a crimson light box by
Contamination, 2008
Joana Vasconcelos (b.1971)
Mixed-media installation
in the atrium of the Palazzo
Grassi, dimensions variable
Joana Vasconcelos by
SIAE 2011
Photo: Orsenigo Chemollc
- ORCH
Installation view at the
Church of San Giorgio
Maggiore, shov^iing
Ascension
Anish Kapoor (b. 1954)
Vortex of smoke rising
from circular base
Anish Kapoor
Photo: Oak Taylor
James Turrell, tucked away in a secret alcove
like a confession box, the works struggled to
outstrip their surroundings. Better to go and
investigate the exhibition of new Arab art
around the corner, whose souvenirs of war
makes for a show far less pretty, but perhaps
more in tune with our unpeaceful times.
Finally, I should mention Anish Kapoor's
Ascension (Fig. 5), situated in the chancel of
the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, on the
other side of the lagoon from St Mark's. It is a
huge font-like structure from which rises, into
the dome of the building, a vertical column of
smoke. On the night it was unveiled hundreds
of people fiocked to see it, only to look on
forlornly as the smoke failed to rise to the
occasion. It is said to be working now, but who
knows? God moves in mysterious ways. Q
The 54th International Venice Biennale is on
view until 27 November.
Catherine Milner is a journalist and
writer currently researching a book on
Middle-Eastern art.
22 APOLLO JULY/AUGUST 2011
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