Venice Biennale 2017
Viva arte Viva, thats' the title of the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale curated by French Christine Macel.
The exhibition - which can be visited until November 26 - is divided into nine chapters: the first two are at the central pavilion of the Gardens (where there is also the majority of the national pavilions) and the following seven are located at the Arsenale .
Each chapter makes sense in the whole path that proposes a tale that goes from the intimacy of artists and their studies to the infinite, theme of the last section: "This opening motion," explained Macel, "represents for a response to a conservative way of life, a dangerous source of discounted opinions, mistrust and indifference. "
The invited artists are in total 120: 103 never attended the Biennial.
We realized a brief report of the exhibition and some of the most significant works.
Pavilion of artists and books
The central pavilion of the Gardens, the Artist and Books, opens with Sam Gilliam's great drapes, one of the most celebrated artists of the Color Field art movement, which from the 1940s and 1950s uses large canvases covered entirely by unchanged color extensions , excluding any interest in the value of form, sign, or matter.Gilliam's work for the Biennial is Yves Klein Blue and pays homage to one of the largest representatives of Color Field Painting: Yves Klein, in fact.
Inside, the trail features action and otium, engagement, and laziness that characterize artistic work: although art productions are destined for a commercial system, the modes of that same creation make artistic work an alternative in which the need for non-productive action is crucial.
This is why the exhibition opens with the Serbian artist Mladen Stilinović, who died in 2016, sleeping in his bed and then on the bench of one of his exhibits.
The otium, without any resignation, also becomes the starting point of the creation process of Frances Stark, a California artist: his work is called Behold Man! And the first thing you see is Stark who is at the center of his study on a couch.
Above her, in a mirror, there's Bobby Jesus, muse and assistant that the artist met at a skate park in Los Angeles.
On the sides of the mirror there are a series of drawings on the link between the artist and his model: there is an exclusively male interpretation of the Turkish Bath of Ingres, there is a reproduction of Toulouse-Lautrec and there are works of other contemporary artists of Stark. A magazine with a portrait of the rapper 50Cent throws on the ground floor. Stark works on the themes of identity and representation codes normed by the so-called mass culture.
The work, with the study of the artist who becomes subject and object of the work, is well represented by Dawn Kasper's "installation", which since 2008 can no longer pay for an atelier invented the concept of "nomadic studio" using as a place of work the space where he was invited to exhibit.
From there Kasper works, plays, interacts with who he comes.
Immediately afterwards, he goes into another study, much more crowded than that of Olafur Eliasson.
Eliasson has assembled a collective work involving eighty asylum seekers and refugees living in Venice and the surrounding area and coming from Nigeria, Gambia, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and China.
They work with some students and the audience, if they so wish.
There is no hierarchy in the atelier: together they make recycled material modules, color them and build them to build a lamp designed by the artist: Green light can also be purchased to fund a project to support and integrate Involved.
The wallpaper behind the studio is a work by Edi Rama, current Prime Minister of Albania and in the opposite position to that of Eliasson: Rama is no longer an active social-political artist but a political man whose art lies within that working time: drawings on wallpaper have been made automatically (dear to surrealists) during his political meetings.
Venice Biennale 2017 on Sky Arte HD
On Thursday 29 June at 19.20 Sky Arte HD (channel 120 and 400 of Sky-Italy) will show all the best of Viva Arte Viva - The Biennial 2017.
That's a special documentary about the international art exhibition currently in Venice at the Gardens and the Arsenal.
A special trip to the 57th Arts Biennial curated by French Christine Macel, from the Pompidou Center in Paris, and Mr Paolo Baratta.
The documentary it's an original production of Sky Arte HD and will illustrate the best of the exhibition, which, as the title announces itself, it's a great metaphysical exploration of life.
