Other than class I've tryign to visit as many biannale art shows as possible. So I will now talk of art shows....
The End - http://cia.is/venice/
This exhibit is by Iceland and was free along the way to school so I decided to drop in to give it a peek. The first room I entered had four screens of the painter and one other guy playing various instruments (depending on the screen) at varying distances from the camera. It also included a space along the canal where there were beer bottles left about a record player, a couch, lots of
canvases in the corner and the artist and his model (occasionally hanging with some other people). Along with other personal effects of the artist. The artist has been painting during his time here random pantings of the model in different places in the space. I liked how you as a view intruded on the artist space and became part of the piece, but the paintings I felt lacked something to be desired. Later I found out that the painter was on the cover of Modern Painter magazine. And I didn't find that out until later, go figure...
Life by Imitation -http://www.nac.gov.sg/
This exhibit was put on by the Nation of Singapore and was right upstairs in the same building as Iceland, and was paled in comparison a bit. Especially since it was easy to compare painting/video art combos. Nonetheless I was intrigued by it since I didn't know it was video art walkign into it. I had seen adds for the paintings and expecting nothing more. They were all based off of old movie posters in Singapore, but there was also a video portion of the poster. They were filmed multiple times and the roles were switched and played either by the same person or at different times different actors reading the same lines. There was a lot of play on race and gender roles which intrigued me.
Giraffe-Bottle-Gun - http://www.nzatvenice.com/
This is one of two exhibits hosted by New Zealand. This exhibit featured larger than life canvases shaped like a giraffe, a bottle, or a gun (depending on what you saw), thus the name. And were painted abstractly using high contrast colors. What I liked most about this exhibit was the pride in culture they had (and their lovely volunteer she was very friendly). They had a room in the back with lots of reading material. Some on the artists, but also on maori art and a video clip (which was given to you on disc) or preformance maori art they did through out Venice. They also gave us a free necklace of a shell!
Save Yourself - http://www.nzatvenice.com/
The Second Exhibit from New Zealand in a seperate building hidden in the back of an apartment complex near Ca'D'Oro contained different small sculptures of people (mostly men) painted in vibrant colors some solid colors some patterns. They reminded me a little of Maori art I had studied in Art of the South Pacific, but I feel if you hadn't studied the culture the beauty fo the pieces was lost. I had seen images of the pieces too and was expecting something larger, but nonetheless the fluidity of the figures and the personality portrayed theough motion was executed very well int he stylized figures. Plus I have to say thanks for the free bag!
Glasstress - http://www.istitutoveneto.it/
This show is a collection of art in the medium of glass made by well established artists. It's right by the academia bridge here in Venice. Sculpture isn't much of my thing and there were things I liked and didn't like, but over all what made this show so great was see all the possibilities glass has to offer. I've never worked with glass, but sometimes I was just like, "I didn't know glass could do that!" If that's not enough to convince you to see it the buildign itself was GORGEOUS! It's held in the Insitute of Science and Letters (well this but in Italia so it sounds much more offical). The institute was started by Naploeon when he occupied Venice, and so it's decorated super fancy for him.
This was another two part gallery, but it was not hosted by a country rather it's a colelction of Contempoary artists. The first one I went to I entered it and encountered an "nazi dancefloor"
Which as strange as that sounds was rather cool. It was a large dance floor you were allowed to walk on with pictures of people who have played nazis in movies. One of my favorite parts was the 101 things to make art which were done in different ways around the gallery. Including: Put
googley eyes on things. And googley eyes were literally put on to the stone statues that were already apart of the space. There was soem strange stuff, but alot of it was realyl cool and I liked this first oen the best of the two. The Second was at Salute and had the statue featured on the posters (a little naked boy holding out a frig by it's legs) on the ledge that sits out
on the canal. Some of the stuff in this one was a little much for me. My favorite pieces were "fucking hell" and "uterus" two seperate artist, and pieces you can only expiereince in person (that and you can't take photos though I tried). One thing I found funny were two particular. I had read about them online (thanks to a certain perverted friend) and these scupltures had sold for about 15 Million dollars a piece. And I walked in and just went "no...way." I couldn't believe there they were in person.
Marialuisa Tadei - www.marialuisatadei.com
Here is an exhibit that was fun because it really utilized the space as a whole. It was in a church and the first one I saw within a church so I was surprised. (you also were'nt allowed to take pictures of the church, but you were allowed to take pictures of the art discuss...) It was presents by the Republic of San Marino. Waterfall was the most iconic piece which was ribbons of platic in bright and metallic colors cascading from the ceiling, but there was also this grave yard piece that you walking into a black box with a grave yard setting while other worldly music played and you approached the other side of the box which had a key-hole looking into a white and sivler feathery world seeming heavenly. You could realyl feel the piece emotionalyl which I like because it wasn't in your face it just touched you in a way.I also attended this book art show; though I wasn't aprticularlly impressed with a lot of the books. Except for two:
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