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Following our monumental 20 Years celebrations, at which the young art families with buns in the ovens, Mr and Mrs Maleki and Mr and Mrs Diner both came to check us out, we headed out on another adventure, this time to the Venice Biennale.
The Biennale was OK. It has been curated by Okwui Enwezor, and for me, it was not the most memorable. The show dealt with the tensions of the world at large, without offering any judgements, it surveyed how artists have reacted to the political, economic and violent struggles facing a global society today. The environment seemed a very key issue addressed through the art. Loads of trees! This tree moved around in the French Pavilion by artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. Not sure why one would create a moving tree, but in the pavilion there are three trees, all moving slowly in time to their metabolism.
This one was in front of the American Pavilion by Joan Jonas. It was hard to relate this tree to the super sensitive show inside the pavilion.
Outside Azerbaijan’s Vita Vitale show, a cast tree by Ugo Rondinone adorned the entrance. Again, I wasn’t sure how this tree related to the interesting show inside the Palazzo.
Even Pinault got in on the act. Danh Vo seemed to love trees in the Danish Pavillion
and in the Punta Della Dogana a tree was strewn all over the floor with hands growing out of it called ‘Log Dog’ 2013
Out of storage came Fischli and Weiss ‘Tree Stump’ 2005.
One of the main features of the International Pavilion was Robert Smithson's large, ‘Dead Tree’, 1969 with mirrors embedded within it, which seemed to set up a tree theme for the Biennale. Okwui, what were you trying to tell us with so many trees?
Bumped into the lovely Isaac Julian next to a tree. Isaac had orchestrated much of the programming in the International Pavilion based around Marx’s ‘Das Capital’.
