Between: venice biennale

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Tuesday, 3 May 2022

Artlyst: Venice To London May 2022 Diary

My May diary for A rtlyst has information about exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, Hignell Gallery London, and Bridge Projects in Los Angeles:

"Several exhibitions/installations in Venice during the 59th Biennale re-situate key works or themes from Christianity’s historic engagement with the Arts, in some cases overlaying biblical narrative onto the present ...

Engaging an ontology of peace, the works in this exhibition and, perhaps, all those highlighted in this article dwell upon our shared yearning for all that is good. Some shroud this hope in the mists of a distant future, but these artists bring eternity into close, immediate proximity—as though we are living in it now. We may not see it, but what we see is not all there is."

For more of my writing about Helaine Blumenfeld's sculptures click here, here, here, here, and for an earlier article about exhibitions at Bridge Projects see here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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Moby - 'God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters ft. Víkingur Ólafsson (Reprise Version)'

Saturday, 20 August 2016

Making Beauty & The Third Paradise

Last year I saw Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva's 'Fragility' for Fabrica Gallery, Brighton. This installation forms the breathtaking entrance to her first major UK show at the Djanogly Gallery Nottingham. The exhibition entitled Making Beauty also includes the first UK showing of ‘Haruspex’ commissioned by the Vatican for the Venice Biennale, 2015.

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is a site-specific installation artist working across the varied media of sculpture, installation, video and sound, photography and architectural interventions. Her materials range from the unusual to the ordinary, from the ephemeral to the precious; they include organic materials, foodstuffs and precious metals.

Making Beauty is a new body of work made in collaboration with academics in medical departments of the universities of Nottingham, East Anglia and London, introducing highly regarded medical research activity to a wider public. Her work has been informed by their work on nutrition, healthy diet, our gut, and the development of highly specialised - invisible to the eye - manufactured parts providing solutions to medical problems. The sculptures reveal the fragility of our bodies and reflect the delicate nature of these medical components. The work has been supported by a research grant from the Wellcome Trust.

For summer 2016, Fabrica is presenting a work by internationally-renowned Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, a leading light of the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s. The work features a labyrinth constructed from cardboard which leads to a mirror with a symbol laid out in coins.

The symbol, the infinity sign altered to add a central loop represents The Third Paradise. According to Pistoletto’s manifesto written in 2003, The Third Paradise seeks to reconcile the conflict between the first and second paradises of nature and human artifice. This conflict is leading toward global destruction but the third paradise offers a solution, a resolution that will save the planet and humanity.

The Third Paradise is the new myth that leads everyone to take personal responsibility at this momentous juncture. The idea of the Third Paradise is to lead artifice—that is, science, technology, art, culture and political life—back to the Earth, while engaging in the reestablishment of common principles and ethical behaviour.

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Moby - Everything That Rises / The Last Day (Poordream Remix).

Saturday, 22 August 2015

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva: Fragility

"Fragility is a site-specific work commissioned by Fabrica from Macedonian born and now Brighton resident, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva.

A series of delicate veils fill the central atrium of Fabrica’s building, a former church: rising from floor to ceiling, diffusing the light, obscuring the way forward. Two narrow passages, carefully pierced through the veined walls, invite us in. At the centre of the work one clear viewpoint toward the filtered light from the main window is revealed, an experience the artist compares to the flash of light reportedly observed when close to death.

Fragility, like much of the artist’s work over the past decade, re-appropriates animal viscera. In this instance caul fat, a membrane that holds the vital organs together, is transformed from a perishable waste product of the pork industry into a sublimely beautiful translucent material via a lengthy chemical process akin to embalming.

Beyond its sensory impact, much of the pleasure in the work lies in understanding its inherent contradictions: the disconnect between the initial state of the material and its aesthetically pleasing result; the artist’s need to witness decay and her effort to halt it, and her desire to bury the viewer in a corporeal labyrinth whilst all the time suggesting a dimension beyond the physical."

"Hadzi-Vasileva works site-specifically across sculpture, installation, video and sound, photography and architectural intervention. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place: its history, locale, environment and communities and the materials she chooses to work with are determined by the particularities of the commission she is undertaking."

"She has exhibited extensively and realised numerous commissions nationally and internationally, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Past sites and commissions include Pied à Terre London, Gloucester Cathedral Gloucester, Towner Gallery Eastbourne, Southgate Bath, L’H du Siège France, Kilmainham Gaol Museum Ireland, 51st Venice Biennale and Public Room Skopje."

She has exhibited previously at Fabrica when for re/sort, she "devised a delicate ‘altar screen’ of fish bones as a new site specific installation for Fabrica’s church interior." In addition, she "re-created epidermis, a whirlpool of salmon skins suspended on shimmering threads."

Her major new work Haruspex is currently presented at the Pavilion of the Holy See at the 56th Venice Biennale, until 22 November 2015. Haruspex is a site specific installation responding to the theme In the Beginning … the Word became flesh and further inspired by Van Eyck's The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. This "monumental architectural installation, whose “fabric” is almost a skin, a mantle, welcomes visitors both in a physical and symbolic dimension at the same time. Realized with organic waste materials in a way which leads from the ready-made to the re-made, the artist creates a cloth that is both an embroidery and surface skin, physical presence and transparency, an instrument of suggestion and surprise."

"Fragility generates many questions concerning our attitudes to decay and finitude. It is the second of three artist works connected to the theme of death and dying that Fabrica is producing until 2017 as part of the Into That Good Night exhibition and events programme. Each of these commissions explores an aspect of mortality or morbidity via the artist’s work and through discussions and other events in the gallery programme. Visit the blog for more information."

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Duke Special - Last Night I Nearly Died.

Saturday, 9 May 2015

Venice Biennale: Pavilion of the Holy See

'The Holy See participates this year for the second time at the Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, with a Pavilion inspired by the New Testament. In the Beginning … the Word became flesh is the theme chosen by the Commissioner Card. Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, at whose request the theme of the “Beginning” has been developed, passing from the 2013 edition’s reference to Genesis to that of the Prologue of the Gospel of John.

Curated by Micol Forti, the structure of the Pavilion is articulated around two essential poles: firstly, the transcendent Word, which is “in the beginning” and which reveals the dialogical and communicative nature of the God of Jesus Christ (v. 1-5); and then the Word made “flesh”, body, bringing the presence of God in humanity, especially where it appears injured and suffering (v. 14). The encounter of these “vertical-transcendent” and “horizontal-immanent” dimensions is the heart of the research. The two “tables” of the Prologue of John’s Gospel are the basic inspiration for the artistic creations of three artists, who have been chosen after a long selection, in light of some precise criteria: the consonance of their own journeys with the chosen theme, the variety of the techniques used, their internationality, diversity and geographic and cultural provenance, and above all the open and evolutionary nature of their work.

Monika Bravo (1964) was born and raised in Colombia, and today lives and works in New York; the Macedonian Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva (1971), currently lives and works in London; the photographer Mário Macilau (1984), was born and raised in Maputo, Mozambique, where he lives.

The catalogue of the Pavilion, edited by Micol Forti and Elisabetta Cristallini, (Italian and English – Gangemi Editore), together with an introductory essay by Gianfranco Ravasi focusing on the theme of the Pavilion, contains texts by Micol Forti, Elisabetta Cristallini, Ben Quash, Octavio Zaya and Alessandra Mauro.'

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Pēteris Vasks - Distant Light.

Saturday, 1 June 2013

The Venice Biennale - a place where you can speak

Micol Forti is the curator of the Vatican's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Holy See is participating for the first time with an exhibition in the Sale d'Armi, a series of spaces the Biennale has restored and converted into permanent pavilions.

Charlotte Higgins reports in today's Guardian that Forti, who is also the curator of 19th-century and contemporary art in the the Vatican museums, thinks that involvement in the biennale is a significant opportunity for the Roman Catholic church. "It's very important for the Holy See to be here: it's a different situation where you can create a space for a dialogue with different ideas, different ideological thinking, different religions," she said. "Here at the biennale, it is not important where you are from: the only important thing is that there is a place where you can speak."

In commissioning for the Pavilion, they had deliberately steered clear of work that engaged directly with Catholic themes or imagery, she said. "For Cardinal Ravasi, it is very important to distinguish between religious and liturgical artwork and that which engages with spiritual ideas. The Sistine chapel is a church: it contains completely revolutionary artworks but it is still a church.

"[The Holy See pavilion] is not a church; this is a completely different context. We respect this context: it is a place for international art from different contexts, philosophies, culture and religions."

Forti said that she and the selection committee for the pavilion "never asked the artists whether they believed or not. We started from the topic of the exhibition: for me it was important that there was intellectual honesty, a clear path in the artists' thinking."

The Holy See pavilion takes the first 11 books of Genesis as its starting point. Its title – Creation, Uncreation, Re-creation – hints at ideas "fundamental for culture and for church tradition", according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the pontifical council for culture and the figure behind the Holy See's appearance at the biennale.

Three rooms of works take on the themes in turn: interactive videos by the Milanese collective Studio Azzurro focus on creation; then come stark images of man's destructiveness by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. Paintings hinting at hope and renewal by American Lawrence Carroll complete the lineup.

Higgins has also written about another work at the Biennale which connects to religious themes; Ai Weiwei's SACRED. Situated in the church of Sant'Antonin, it consists of six large iron boxes, into which visitors can peek to see sculptures recreating scenes from the artist's detention. Here is a miniature Ai being interrogated; here a miniature Ai showers or sits on the lavatory while two uniformed guards stand over him. Other scenes show him sleeping and eating – always in the same tiny space, always under double guard. (The music video refers to some of these scenes with a lightly satirical tone that is absent from the sculpture.)

According to Greg Hilty of London's Lisson Gallery, under whose auspices SACRED is being shown, and who saw Ai in China a week ago, the work is a form of "therapy or exorcism – it was something he had to get out. It is an experience that we might see as newsworthy, but for him, he was the one in it."

The ecclesiastical setting, the title of the work, the appearance of the metal crates (which might resemble a reliquary or saint's coffin) suggest that Ai is positioning himself as a martyr. According to Hilty, however, "He is not pretending to be a saint, but the setting does suggest things such as the stations of the cross, or the temptations of St Anthony, to whom the church is dedicated. But these are human, universal things that go beyond Ai Weiwei … he's not saying he's a saint, or that he is wholly right or good. He's just being honest."

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Ai Weiwei - Dumbass.

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Beyond 'Airbrushed from Art History' (9)

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.

Friday, 19 March 2010

On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies

Three superimposed slow motion images of an egg frying in a pan coalescing gradually into one combined image sound as though the films of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, showing in On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, are likely to live up to the stereotype of contemporary art as superficial comedy. Instead, the visitor paying careful (even prayerful) attention will be surprised and rewarded because that selfsame careful attention is what Gusmão and Paiva have shown in the creation of their art.

Their film of frying eggs reveals the beauty in a process of change which is often only viewed pragmatically. This is the commonplace becoming extraordinary or, in George Herbert’s memorable phrase, ‘heaven in ordinary’. Their choice of three superimposed images also provides the frisson of a trinity of eggs coalescing into one substance. That this connotation is not unintended is hinted at through the description of their films as “poetic philosophical fiction” and an accompanying artist’s book, which is an anthology of texts sourced from thinkers, poets and theologians presenting a range of ideas focused around the existence of God. What can be found then in these wonder-full films is the combination of contemplative meditations on ordinary objects with philosophical explorations of the nature of belief.

Their work exudes a playful inventiveness that makes us look again because they have originally looked at their subjects with real attention. Such attention is, to my mind, an aspect of prayer. 'Experiment with Effluvium' shows the splash and ripples of a skimming stone on water. Their slow-mo technique and the framing of the shots reveal the beauty of chaos evolving into symmetry. Slow motion is used as a means of creating meditative space and features again in a film exploring the shapes and substance of water flowing down a pane of glass. Another film shows a blown egg revolving while lit from one side; the soft glint and glimmer of the egg’s shell being firstly spotlit and then erased as its revolution brings it into eclipse.

'The Great Drinking Bout' is film of a group of men carrying a large pitcher of drink into the woods and enacting bizarre rituals around their consumption of the pitcher’s fluid. As this surreal narrative unfolds however it develops into a meditation on trust with the group initially following their leader and then leading him as he places the now empty pitcher on his head at the film’s conclusion.

Gusmão and Paiva were Portugal’s representatives at the last Venice Biennale and are exhibiting here for the first time in the UK. Inspired by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who wrote only in pseudonyms to present differing worldviews, they too revel in the creative energy engendered by contradictory philosophical ideas and express this energy through a humorous sense of wonder. Their sense of the profound comedy encountered through alternative perspectives is summed up in 'Astronomy of the End of the Boot' where a man observes the splendour of the sky through a hole in his shoe.

On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, ends 21 March 2010.

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The Blue Aeroplanes - You (Are Loved).