The National Catholic Register has an interesting piece about this year's Venice Biennale in which "a new respect for spiritual themes in contemporary art" is detected:
"The German pavilion and [Christof] Schlingensief’s work demonstrate how contemporary art can be cutting-edge and morally engaged at the same time.
Schlingensief was a filmmaker, opera director and multimedia artist who died of lung cancer in August 2010 at 49, just months after being asked to design the German pavilion.
The pavilion’s commissioner, Susanne Gaensheimer, consulted the artist’s colleagues and wife to complete the exhibit after his death. Instead of using his incomplete designs, which focused on the relationship between Western Europe and Africa — in fact, Schlingensief’s most recent grand project was the creation of an opera house, theater and music school, clinic and playing fields in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, one of the poorest regions in Africa — they turned the pavilion into a presentation of his most memorable work, which has long included the themes of death and redemption.
Visitors to the German pavilion enter a replica of the Catholic church where Schlingensief served as an altar boy in his hometown of Oberhausen, which is in the Ruhr Valley. Sitting in pews, they face an altar with candles and a crucifix.
Behind the altar stands a director’s chair. A hospital bed is on the left side of the altar, as though in a wing of the chapel, with a light box showing x-rays of the artist’s lungs to the right of the altar. A triptych of film screens hangs above the altar showing excerpts from his films.
At first glance, the use of the church setting is disturbing to any believer who suspects the inclusion of so many unusual objects and images is, possibly, sacrilegious. However, the church creates a shared frame of reference and vocabulary relevant to the artist’s childhood and familiar to the majority of participants in the historical experiences he probes. The installation is respectful to Catholic theology and liturgy."
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Young Disciples - Get Yourself Together.
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