Tomorrow is the first day of the 58th Venice Biennale which will run until November 24th, 2019. We have prepared a lot of information and coverage directly from Venice for these who will visit this art celebration and also for those who will not be able to attend it, but who would like to feel its atmosphere and learn about the events as if they were in Venice. At the beginning we present you a Contemporary Lynx’s subjective guide tracking step by step this year artists in Venice. We invite you to roam around the narrow streets of this most famous pearl from Veneto lagoon!!!
A. Polish Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Flight”
Artist: Roman Stańczak
Curators: Łukasz Mojsak, Łukasz Ronduda
Commissioner: Hanna Wróblewska
Organiser: Zachęta — National Gallery of Art
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
The interior of the Polish Pavilion at Venice will feature a sculpture by Roman Stańczak, an artist renowned for his deconstructions of the material order of objects that consist in turning them inside out. This time, Stańczak applies this artistic procedure to a mid-sized aircraft. Its interior, complete with with cockpit and on-board equipment, as well as passenger seats, will emerge on the outside, while the wings and fuselage will be wound inside, to the interior of the sculpture.
The Polish Pavilion will become a hangar for Stańczak’s inside-out aircraft. Visitors will be able to look into the inside/outside of the airplane, thus experiencing not only the sculpture’s unique form and scale, but also the effect of an unexpected ‘reversal of the world’. Flight is set to become a monument to Polish reality after the country’s capitalist transformation and to the paradoxes that govern that reality. This surrealist sculpture — created through destruction — has the power to become a symbol that can unite the divided society by addressing the conflict between modernity and spirituality. The piece shows how annihilation of one of these spheres contributes to the expansion of the other. As in his his previous works, Stańczak seeks to prove that people are in need of a spiritual change, which they may experience in a situation that negates a familiar order of things and disturbs their safe existence in the world. An aircraft turned inside out stands as a symbol of the modern-day lack of the sense of security, which is missing despite promises made by modernity.
A. & B. The 58th International Art Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Time
curator: Ralf Rugoff
11 May to 24 November 2019 (Pre-opening on 8, 9, 10 May)
Location: Central Pavilion (Giardini) + Arsenale
In a speech given in the late 1930s, British MP Sir Austen Chamberlain invoked an ancient Chinese curse that he had learned of from a British diplomat who had served in Asia, and which took the curious form of saying, “May you live in interesting times.” “There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us,” Chamberlain observed. “We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.”
This summary sounds uncannily familiar today as the news cycle spins from crisis to crisis. Yet at a moment when the digital dissemination of fake news and “alternative facts” is corroding political discourse and the trust on which it depends, it is worth pausing whenever possible to reassess our terms of reference. In this case it turns out that there never was any such “ancient Chinese curse,” despite the fact that Western politicians have made reference to it in speeches for over a hundred years. It is an ersatz cultural relic, and yet for all its fictional status it has had real rhetorical effects in significant public exchanges. At once suspect and rich in meaning, this kind of uncertain artefact suggests potential lines of exploration that are worth pursuing at present, especially when the “interesting times” it evokes seem to be with us once again. Hence the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will be titled after a counterfeit curse.
An-225 іs taking off 2015, photo, © Vasiliy Koba, Courtesy Antonov Company
B. Ukrainian Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
The Shadow of Dream* cast upon Giardini della Biennale
Curator: Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Stanislav Turina, and Anton Varga)
Pavilion of Ukraine is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine
Co-organizer: Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, Poland)
Institutional partner: National Art Museum of Ukraine
11 May – 24 November 2019
Mriya over Giardini della Biennale: 9 May 2019, 12:00 pm.
Official opening in Arsenale: 9 May 2019 13:00 pm.
Location: Arsenale, Sestiere di Castello, Campiello Tana 2169/F, 30122 Venice
Pavilion of Ukraine at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will present the project entitled The Shadow of Dream* cast upon Giardini della Biennale devoted to rethinking the notion of myth and its significance and influence on contemporary art.
For the full duration of the biennale there will be performances in the pavilion based on the myth of the flight of the world’s largest cargo aircraft over Venice on May 9th at noon. The An-225 Mriya,*(Ukrainian: ‘dream’), will cast its shadow over the Giardini della Biennale for a few seconds carrying only a digital hard drive with a directory of all living Ukrainian artists in its cargo hold.
The Shadow of Dream* cast upon Giardini della Biennale project also has an allegorical presence in Venice. The shadow upon the Giardini is a metaphor for the power dynamics of contemporary art, existing in local, European and worldwide contexts.
As stated by Open Group (curator): “Such histories inflect our experience as Ukrainian artists, however they do not wholly define us. The story of the shadow of the Dream passing over the Giardini della Biennale may pass into myth via retellings in the pavilion and the media, but we consider this to be constituent of the dynamic corpus of our curatorial proposition.”
Czech Republik, Stanislav Kolibal, courtesy Martin Polak
C. Czech (Republic) and Slovak (Republic) Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Former Uncertain Indicated”
Artist: Stanislav Kolíbal
Commissioner: Adam Budak, National Gallery Prague
Curator: Dieter Bogner
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Fondamenta Case Nuove 2738c, Marina Militare, Venice
Stanislav Kolíbal will represent the Czech Republic at the 58th International Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition will develop the key themes of Kolíbal´s work – time and lability – as a critical response to the challenging political and social context in Czechoslovakia and nowadays. Dieter Bogner has been appointed curator of the exhibition in the Czech and Slovak pavilion.
Since the early 1960s, Stanislav Kolíbal (born 1925, in Orlová, former Czechoslovakia) has been elaborating a highly individual creative style, engaged in critical reconsideration of minimalism and conceptual art. His two- and three- dimensional works – blurring the borderlines between painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture, and oscillating between illusion and reality – articulate aspects of lability in the dual relationship of perfection/ insufficiency, stability/ instability, certainty/ uncertainty. They are based on the artist´s critical perception of constant changes of his social and political milieu. Hence the exhibition can be understood as a conceptual response to the Biennale main curator Ralph Rugoff’s understanding of art as a sensitive membrane of complexity of precarious times we live in.
The title of the exhibition and the catalogue, Former Uncertain Indicated, is derived from Kolíbal´s conceptual installation conceived in the mid-1970s. Its poetic and ambiguous character is crucial for the understanding of the artist’s position regarding time, life and his art. Kolíbal’s artistic work is unquestionably determined by the “most interesting times” he experienced in Czechoslovakia since the early 1940s.
C. Lithuanian Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Sun & Sea (Marina)”
Artists: Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė, Rugilė Barzdžiukaite
Commissioners: Dr Rasa Antanavičiūtė and Jean-Baptiste Joly
Curator: Lucia Pietroiusti
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Marina Militare, Fondamenta Case Nuove 2738c, Calle de la Celestia, Castello
The Lithuanian pavilion will be transformed into an artificial beach where more than 20 participants and singers will bring a contemporary opera performance. This will certainly be one of the most captivating pavilions of the 2019 Art Biennale. From the mezzanine gallery, you will observe the vacationers in colourful bathing suits lying on their towels on the beach. Throughout the performance, characters begin telling and singing (whilst lying down) their stories and preoccupations. The topics range from trivial concerns about sunburn and plans for future vacations to some of the most pressing issues of our times such as fears of environmental catastrophe.
The opera performance takes place every Saturday (until 31 October), non-stop from 10 am until 6 pm. On the other days, you can listen to the opera and watch the (empty) beach. There will also be surprise performances from time to time.
D. Estonian Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Birth V”
Artist: Kris Lemsalu
Curators: Andrew Berardini, Irene Campolmi, Sarah Lucas, Tamara Luuk
Commissioner: Maria Arusoo, Centre of Contemporary Arts of Estonia
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: c/o Legno & Legno, Giudecca 211, 30133 Venezia
Kris Lemsalu will resent sculptures and actions in the Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Birth, life, and death in three stories, spurting upward with a shaman’s summons from the wet depths of tangled pools through the broken music of life and up to an angelic conclusion, the rebirth of art. Sprayed with spiritual ecstasy, sprouting more than a few polychrome porcelain pussies, reaching with a hundred hands ever open and outward, pulling us into life, helping us along, lifting us into the beyond. Between here and there, a boat like Chiron’s, but one that just doesn’t take us out but also into life. Even if we invent ourselves, we’re not so lonely as that first creature, we have the help of others to get there.
Kris Lemsalu was born in 1985 in Tallinn, Estonia, and lives and works between Vienna and Tallinn. She creates mixed-media sculptures, installations and performances with unexpected materials. Lemsalu’s pieces evoke the bestial side of human beings and civilizations and are often underscored by feminist themes.
E. Pavilion of Iraq — La Biennale di Venezia
“Fatherland”
Artist: Serwan Baran
11 May – 24 November 2019
Opening hours are 10am – 6pm, every day except Mondays
Location: Ca’ del Duca, Corte del Duca Sforza, San Marco 3052, Venice
This is the first time Iraq will be represented by a solo artist at the Biennale, and the exhibition, entitled ‘Fatherland’ is co-curated by Tamara Chalabi and Paolo Colombo.
Iraqi-Kurdish artist Serwan Baran was born in Baghdad in 1968, and is considered part of the ‘new generation’ of Iraqi painters. He has lived through over 40 years of war in his country and was conscripted during conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. For the pavilion exhibition, Baran will present two new commissions. The large-scale and site-specific works will invoke the feeling of a war zone upon entering, in line with Baran’s signature dark and atmospheric style.
Iraq and the region have endured reigns of terror and authoritarian rule in the name of nationalist and religious ideologies, often driven by the need to wage war both in competition for, and in defence of, the ‘Fatherland’. The term al-watan (meaning ‘homeland’ or ‘nation’) is used by dictators in demagogic speeches and in fascist literature. The exhibition ‘Fatherland,’ is a commentary on the masculine and paternalistic dimensions of political culture in Iraq and the region.
A. French Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Deep See Blue Surrounding You”
Artist: Laure Prouvost
Curator: Martha Kirszenbaum
Commissioner: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
The cornerstone of Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre is a fictional film. It takes the form of an initiatory journey filmed over the course of a road trip on horseback through France—from the Parisian suburbs to the northern region, from the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval to the Mediterranean Sea—and, finally, to Venice. A sculptural installation, taking as a metaphorical point the trajectory of the octopus goes beyond the film, transcending out of the realms of the Pavilion and beyond. It uses typical processes of the artist’s practice such as leftover objects from the film, resin, clay, glass, plants or water vapor, and features performances interacting with the architecture and the objects.
A. Deutscher Pavillon — La Biennale di Venezia
Artist: Natascha Süder Happelmann
Curator: Franciska Zólyom
Commissioner: Ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
Natascha Süder Happelmann develops a multimedia artwork through a collaborative process, inviting artists from different disciplines to intervene. The resulting work joins architecture, sound, sculpture and installation to investigate the current economic, political and social conflicts. In particular, it addresses the concepts of containment, isolation and accumulation and their consequences. The project continues beyond the pavilion through a programme of publications, concerts, radio broadcasts and lectures, that discuss these themes in different contexts and spaces.
A. British Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
Artist: Cathy Wilkes
Curator: Zoe Whitley
Commissioner: British Council, led by Emma Dexter, British Council Director Visual Arts
11 May 2019 — 24 Nov 2019
Location: Giardini
Cathy Wilkes exhibition will be made entirely of new work, including sculptural installations, object arrangements and paintings, which will flow from room to room.
In the short film above, members of the British Pavilion Selection Committee 2019 and her peers tell us more about Wilkes and her work.
Since the late 1990s, Glasgow-based Wilkes (b. 1966, Dundonald, Belfast) has built a considerable reputation for sculptural installations of profound and mysterious intensity. The artist experiments with all kinds of media and materials, and collects treasures and ingredients. Her work recalls emergent visions of interiors and places of loss, and meditates on the nature of love and the coexistence of life and death.
The fierce integrity of her work is widely acknowledged and, in 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Maria Lassnig Prize – a prestigious honour to recognise the achievements of mid-career artists.
Boris Ignatowitsch, The Atlantes, 1931, Photograph. Courtesy the artist Hermitage and the Russian Pavilion
A. Russian Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Lc 15:11-32”
Participants: Alexander Sokurov, Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai
Curator: Mikhail Piotrovsky
Commissioner: Semyon Mikhailovsky
11 May 2019 — 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
The exhibition takes its name from the Gospel of Luke and the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’. The painting on this theme by Rembrandt has become the main masterpiece of the Hermitage Museum and the central theme of an installation for the Pavilion by the famous film director Alexander Sokurov simultaneously representing one of the halls of the museum and an artist’s studio surrounded by the turmoil and war of 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 is dedicated to the intricate mechanisms in the Winter Palace such as the famous Peacock Clock.
A. The United States Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Martin Puryear: Liberty / Libertà”
Artist: Martin Puryear
Commissioner/Curator: Brooke Kamin Rapaport Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy
11 May 2019 — 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
Martin Puryear (American, b. 1941) will represent the United States at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Puryear is recognized for a fiercely independent visual language of object making that has developed over a half-century, and for a sculptural practice that has influenced generations of artists. The Biennale Arte 2019 will mark a major international presentation for the artist, whose work has remained at the forefront of American creativity. Puryear will create an entirely new body of work for the U.S. Pavilion, including new sculpture and a site-specific outdoor installation for the Pavilion’s forecourt. Puryear’s work summons disparate sources of inspiration to realize a coherent vision that culls and clarifies across cultures, continents, eras, and perspectives.
In conjunction with the presentation at the U.S. Pavilion, the Conservancy and Puryear will realize outreach programs with underserved youth through a collaboration between Studio Institute of Studio in a School Association, Inc. in New York and Istituto Santa Maria Della Pietà in Venice.
A. Romanian Pavilion — La Biennale di Venezia
“Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence”
Artists: Belu-Simion Făinaru, Dan Mihălțianu, Miklós Onucsán
Curator: Cristian Nae
Commissioner: Attila Kim
11 May 2019 — 24 November 2019
Location: Giardini
The exhibition, installed in two complementary venues – The Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale and the New Gallery in the heart of Venice – presents contemporary versions of historically significant art projects realized by three uncompromising artists whose singular artistic trajectories, spanning over more than 40 years, expand the geography of contemporary art.
The project exposes the cultural mobility of these artworks across both space and time. Central to the exhibition as a critical form is the ability to provide a space of encounter for post-conceptual artworks which play between imaginary and material configurations.
The installations at the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini have extensions on display at the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice.
Belu-Simion Făinaru’s installation You Have Always to Start Anew and Miklós Onucsán’s Camouflaging Guide, complemented by additional elements of the installation Canal Grande: the Capital Pool and the Associated Public and a series of performative events realized by Dan Mihălțianu under the title Liquid Capital, are hosted at the New Gallery.
F. “FORCE FIELD. Emerging Polish Artists”
Artists: Norbert Delman, Małgorzata Goliszewska, Bartek Górny, Laura Grudniewska, Marta Hryniuk, Kornel Janczy, Tomasz Koszewnik, Dorota Kozieradzka, Magdalena Łazarczyk, Karolina Mełnicka, Maciej Nowacki, Cyryl Polaczek, Stach Szumski
Curator: Ania Muszyńska
Promoter: Starak Family Foundation
8 May – 15 September 2019
Location: Oficine 800, Fondamenta San Biagio 800, Giudecca, Venice
The Force Field exhibition is a performance of energy, boldness and weight of Polish contemporary art, presented in Venice from 8 May to 15 September. The premiere projects of thirteen artists, who currently represent the young generation’s cutting edge compose a captivating and multi-faceted narrative about the present, past and future.
The Force Field exhibition is an attempt to capture the common denominator for the subjective viewpoint of the reality, which binds all artists. This is because most of them draw their attention to affective experiences, personal relations, intimate emotions. They regard art as a “force field” which generates an alternative zone of unfettered and creative development, a safe space. The artists seem to accept the fact that art does not have hard tools at its disposal which could remedy political, social or environmental crises they both witness and experience. Is this deliberate and cautious withdrawal a sign of passivity? On the contrary. Contemplations being a condensation of attention require peacefully safe places, and it is from them that the force with which the artists’ statements intrude into the reality is derived. A clearly outlined conclusion is an elusive or even unuttered nostalgy for the disappearing foundations. Incontestable values, acceptance of corporeal passing, credibility of relations, environmental equilibrium, locality of crises that gives an opportunity for a real activity. The contemporary young Polish art is inquisitive, attentive and critical. It happens that it assumes the form of a socially involved activity, it often couples with diligent manual labour. Elsewhere it forms a charming phantasy or an astounding, albeit challenging, pleasure. Sequences overlap, the preset mechanisms work with the preset and intended force. The role of an artist as a strict critic, a vigilant observer, is undertaken in a responsible manner, and maturity reaches its path.
G. “Józef Robakowski. What Can Still Happen”
Curators: Bożena Czubak, Fabio Cavallucci.
Organiser: MAK Gallery
Opening: 7 May 2019, 7 pm
The exhibition is on view through 5 June 2019, Monday–Sunday, 2 pm–7 pm
Location: Calle Regina, 2261, Santa Croce, Venezia
The project deals with the contemporary, with what is happening, how it is shown and communicated. Most of the footage has been sourced from social media. Parades, marches and demonstrations of various political groupings, artistic actions, awareness campaigns about various aspects of life. In a space with a constellation of dynamically changing images, the show presents artist-edited videos of what is happening in the streets and public spaces these days, what is recorded, shared and distributed.
The Facebook effect, with millions in Poland and billions worldwide using the service, is, Robakowski argues, mainly about the distribution and redistribution of visual messages, about the opening up of a stage of uncontrolled information flow where everyone can be an author, producer or distributor of information. This open stage provides images of reality vis-à-vis which contemporary art has become increasingly helpless. What matters in the visual activism mobilised for various social and political causes are not the images themselves, but the ways in which they are used and abused.
In a mediatised society the commonly available communication channels allowing people to broadcast their own news and express their opinions are, according to the artist, the places where the images of reality are most hotly contested.
H. “Body as Home”
Curated by Miguel Mallol
Artists: October! Collective – Aleksandra Karpowicz (PL), Fayann Smith (UK), Isabella Steinsdotter (NOR)
9 May – 25 September 2019
Location: GAD – Giudecca Art District, GAD Project Space #01, Giudecca 213-B, 30133, Venice
Among the works on display Body as Home by the artist Aleksandra Karpowicz with October! Collective will be the flagship installation of the Giudecca Art District, situated in Project Space 1. Curated by Miguel Mallol, Body as Home is a three-channel film presented in triptych that documents a journey of self-discovery, identity, migration and a search for the meaning of home. Filmed in 4 different cities; Cape Town, London, New York and Warsaw, Body as Home captures 3 protagonists in each city – a local, a visitor and the filmmaker herself in order to explore the concept of home in regard to geographical location, one’s placement within society, and personal identity. The film explores how notions of physical selfhood and our sense of home overlap. Body as Home looks to address the relationship between human physi-cality, sexuality and identity and urge viewers to accept and feel at home in their own bodies.
For the official launch of the Giudecca Art District on Thursday 9th May, there will be a series of perfor-mances, including Body as Home by the October! Collective. The launch event will be followed by two days of talks, performances, and video screenings, to propose a critical view of the current time together with Italian and international artists, curators and intellectuals.
I. “Future Generation Art Prize”
Organiser: Pinchuk Foundation
Preview Days: 8 – 10 May 2019, 10 am – 6 pm
Press preview: Thursday, 9 May, 09:00
Location: Palazzo Ca’ Tron, San Croce, 1957, 30135, Venice
The PinchukArtCentre and Victor Pinchuk Foundation present works by 21 young artists across 17 countries, shortlisted for the 5th edition of the Future Generation Art Prize – the global art prize for artists aged 35 or younger. Established in 2009, 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of the prize’s founding.
An official Collateral Event of the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the show will be on view at the Palazzo Ca’ Tron from 11 May until 18 August 2019. The 21 exhibited artists, chosen from amongst 5,800 entries, include the winner of the Future Generation Art Prize 2019, the Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė, and the winners of the Special Prize, Gabrielle Goliath (South Africa) and Cooking Sections (UK).
In addition there will be new work by the other shortlisted artists, inluding: Monira Al Qadiri (Kuwait), Yu Araki (Japan), Korakrit Arunanondchai (Thailand), Kasper Bosmans (Belgium), Madison Bycroft (Australia), Alia Farid (Kuwait), Rodrigo Hernández (Mexico), Laura Huertas Millán (Colombia), Marguerite Humeau (France), Eli Lundgaard (Norway), Taus Makhacheva (Russia), Toyin Ojih Odutola (Nigeria), Sondra Perry (United States), Gala Porras-Kim (Colombia), Jakob Steensen (Denmark), Daniel Turner (United States), Anna Zvyagintseva (Ukraine) and artist collectives Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme.
Jannis Kounellis, Centro Arti Visive Pescheria, Pesaro 2016. Photo: Michele Alberto Sereni
J. “Jannis Kounellis”
11 May – 24 Nov 2019
Location: Ca’ Corner della Regna, Santa Croce 2215, 30135 Venezia
“Jannis Kounellis”, curated by Germano Celant, is the major retrospective dedicated to the artist following his death in 2017. Developed in collaboration with Archivio Kounellis, the project brings together more 60 works from 1959 to 2015, from both Italian and international museums , as well as from important private collections both in Italy and abroad. The show explores the artistic and exhibition history of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus 1936 – Rome 2017), establishing a dialogue between his works and the eighteenth-century spaces of Ca’ Corner della Regina.
Jörg Immendorff
K. “Jörg Immendorff: Ichich, Ichihr, Ichwir, We All Have to Die”
8 May 2019 — 24 Nov 2019
Location: Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Campo Santa Maria Formosa, 5252, 30122 Venezia
Curated by Francesco Bonami, “Jörg Immendorff: Ichich, Ichihr, Ichwir, We All Have to Die” is the first major exhibition of the late artist’s work in an Italian institution. While this exhibition is not a retrospective, it is the first to uniquely address Immendorff’s inquiry into the artist’s identity and his participation within his own paintings. Jörg Immendorff (1945-2007) was one of the most important artists to emerge from post-war Germany. His work has been exhibited internationally since the mid-1960s. Most recently, the major retrospective “Jörg Immendorff: For All Beloved in the World” opened at Haus der Kunst, Munich and will travel to Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid in 2019. Immendorff lived and worked in Düsseldorf and Hamburg until his death in 2007.
L. “Arshile Gorky: 1904-1948”
8 May – 22 September 2019
Location: Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Santa Croce 2076, 30135 Venice
Opening 8 May 2019, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia presents the first retrospective survey of the American artist Arshile Gorky in Italy, entitled ‘Arshile Gorky: 1904 – 1948’, at Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art. Bringing together over 80 works, this major exhibition explores the full breadth of Gorky’s oeuvre. From his interrogation of modernist masters in the 1920s, to his late paintings of the 1940s, Gorky’s singular vision was present throughout, defining him as one of the pivotal figures of 20th century American Art, alongside Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.
B. “Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project”
11 May – 24 November 2019
Location: Arsenale, Sale d’Armi
Marysia Lewandowska is the artist set to exhibit in the Pavilion of Applied Arts located in the Arsenale, Sale d’Armi. The project, renewed for the fourth consecutive year, is the result of the collaboration between La Biennale and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
M. “Pavilion 0”
Artists: Florencia S.M. Bruck, Javier Krasuk, David Rodriguez Gimeno, Ya-Lun Tao, Su-Chu Hsu, Shih-Ta Liu, Chi-Hung Tsai, Yu-Hsiung Huang, Pia Myrvold, Harro Schmidt, Andrzej Wasilewski, Andreas Guskos, Tomasz Wendland, Andrzej Głowacki, Pavel Korbička, Hugo Demartini, Zbyněk Janáček, Marek Sibinský, Arkadiusz Marcinkowski, Dariusz Gajewski, Mateusz Ząbek, Jakub Cikała, Adam Jastrzebski, Kosaara and People.
Curator: Tomasz Wendland
From 9 May 2019
Location: GAD – Giudecca Art District, GAD Project Space #01, Giudecca 213-B, 30133, Venice
Pavilion 0, whose first edition took place at Palazzo Dona in Campo San Polo in 2013, initiated the presence of a national pavilion represented by 25 artists from around the world at the Biennale di Venezia divided into national pavilions, expressing the nineteenth concept of the upcoming cultures of European countries and outside the world. The 21st century is a post global reality, parallel worlds: analog and virtual. Identity found itself at the crossroads between the physical body and the cloud. In connection with OBE (out of body experience) there is the phenomenon of exteriorization, the transfer of conscious-ness to another dimension.
Art that is not permanentl associated with any medium, explores and creates reality, confronts man with unconventional experiences. Pavillion 02 refers to oxygen, an element present in matter, water and air, which is a condition for the existence of life. Referring to the concept of GAD – “take care of your garden”, we are interested in living in the dimension of bio and cyber space meaning new utopias of our civilization.
“Zuecca Project Space”
Location: Giudecca 33, 30133 – Venezia
Since 2011, the non-for-profit Cultural Organization Zuecca Projects, founded by Alessandro Possati, has been promoting, through Spazio Ridotto and Zuecca Project Space, a long list of interdisciplinary projects, firmly linked to the most advanced and innovative contemporary contexts. International artists and architects such as Rirkrit Tiravanija (2012), Ai Weiwei (2013), Lola Schnabel (2013), Eisenman Architects (2014), John Giorno (2015), Atelier Van
Lieshout (2016), Slater B. Bradley (2016) and Marina Abramović (2017), were exhibited by the organization.
Zuecca’s primary activity revolves around the different Venice Biennales, however international projects are developed regularly, based on specific targeted partnerships. The projects hosted and organized by Zuecca Projects are characterized by high-quality cultural contents, partnerships with leading international cultural institutions and high-profile visitors.
Art Projects Map Venice (Zuecca Project Space)
N. “Magmatism Pic-Nic at Pavilion”
9 May 2019, 6pm – 10pm:
Video Screenings: Ewa Doroszenko, Paweł Kowalewski, Gabriel Mestre / Jacek Sosnowski, Lisl Ponger, Peter Johansson, Julien Bouillon, Ibrahim Quraishi, Pepe Mogt, Matti Aikio
10 May 2019 – Performative Breakfast, 10am – 2pm:
Networking session with special presentations by: Melissa Lockwood, Norbert Delman, Antonio Gritón / Adriana Camacho
Curated by: Gabriel Mestre Arrioja and Jacek Sosnowski
Location: Chiesa dei Santi Cosma e Damiano, Giudecca 624-625, Calle Cosmo Venice
Magmatism is a cross cultural platform of exploring various notions of how contemporary culture circulates, excludes and explodes. In slow movement of large masses of magma within Earth crust violent yet small events occur. These eruptions of liquified rock happen all the time building what surface of the Earth is. Constant accumulation of material creates structures that evolve over time. These phenomena can be compared to how culture and humanity works – trough slow passage of time and shaped by small events that often go unnoticed. In series of exhibitions, texts and discussions we will explore various notions of magmatism metaphor.
O. “The Palace of Ritual”
Artists: Isadorino Gore, Enam Gbewonyo, Florence Keith-Roach, Alena Ledeneva, Karolina Łebek, Lynn Lu, Nissa Nishikawa, Sabina Sallis, Zorka Wollny, Khadija Von Zinnenburg Carroll and Mengting Zhuo
Curated by: Annie Jael Kwan, Denis Maksimov, Michał Murawski and Kasia Sobucka
9-11 May 2019, 2 – 6pm
Location: Palazzo Donà Brusa, Campo San Polo 2177, Venezia
The Palace of Ritual is a programme of immersive, intimate performances, screenings and discursive workshops that aims to activate heterodox knowledges and practices of healing, sourced from myths, ritual and cosmology. Participants are invited to awake from the artificial psychological coma of the accelerating and verticalizing present, via healing rituals of care, levelling, perversion and futuring.
The programme explores why a return to ‘nature’ is an increasingly pressing need for many people today. Does our ‘post-contemporary’ (or metamodern) world, mediated as it is by unprecedented layerings of artificially intelligent technologies, paradoxically make so-called ‘traditional’ practices and rituals more desirable? What do the concepts of attachment to ritual, spirituality and nature mean today? We will revisit older, more divisive rituals, investigating what can be learned and appropriated from their obsolete and hierarchical but seductive styles, shapes and rhythms; and we will explore how rituals have been invented, reinvented and adapted today.
P. “Baselitz – Academy”
8 May – 8 September 2019
Location: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Campo della Carità, Dorsoduro 1050, 30123 Venezia
It is a major retrospective of works by the renowned German artist Georg Baselitz, will be the first exhibition by a living artist to be presented at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice to open on 8 May 2019. The exhibition is a ollateral Event of the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
The exhibition, curated by Professor Kosme de Barañano, will trace the periods and critical junctures in the artist’s extraordinary 60-year career through paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. A special feature of the exhibition will be a cycle of rarely seen works exploring Baselitz’s relationship with Italy and the academic tradition.
Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, ‘Untitled (Holding Horizon)’, Frieze Artist Award, London, 2018 photo: Spyros Rennt
B. Alex Baczyński-Jenkins Performance Art Program of the 58th Venice Biennale
Location: Alleyway on the left immediately after the Arsenale’s ticket barrier; enter the door under the neon light
The performance program is devised by Ralph Rugoff, Artistic Director of the 58th Venice Biennale of Art, and Aaron Cezar, Director of Delfina Foundation. Commissioned by Arts Council England and co-produced by Venice Biennale and Delfina Foundation, as part of Meetings on Art. Presented with support from European Art East Foundation and Francise Chang. The work was originally commissioned for the 2018 Frieze Artist Award, in partnership with Delfina Foundation, and presented as part of Frieze Projects, curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt. Developed as part of Kem’s residency at Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw
