Venice - Day One: Around the Biennale and Glasstress 2019

Abstract Composition, 1962, Mixed media on hardboard. Private collection

detail of Abstract Composition

We were in Venice for 7 nights, 6 days. In the past I've tried to group the exhibitions by what was most interesting, but this year I think it might work better to go chronologically, according to when we saw what. My goals were to see some of the Biennale pavilions that had the best reviews and to see selected ancillary exhibitions.  Because walking is a challenge for Tom these days, I tried to plan so as to require the least steps, not really of much worth in a city like Venice, where walking is just necessary.

We arrived the evening of July 1 nearing the end of a heat wave across southern Europe. On the way to the Arsenale, where we bought Biennale tickets, we stopped at the Cyprus Pavilion, showing work by Christoforos Savva (1924-1968) “one of the most groundbreaking Cypriot artists of the twentieth century,” according to the very useful brochure that accompanies the exhibition.  The brochure describes Savva’s use of found textiles to make abstract paintings he called Yfasmatography, his concrete works that were often incorporated in architecture, and his 1967-68 “pin paintings,” included in the inaugural Cypriot Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1968, just before Savva suddenly died.  It’s always a revelation to me to find that artists more than 50 years ago were recycling found objects and textiles in abstract compositions.

Cement relief with glass

Composition, 1967-68, Pins on canvas on styrofoam,
Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia

detail of Composition, 1967-68

After purchasing our Biennale tickets, we wandered into two booths next to the Arsenale entrance. The Hong Kong pavilion featured Shirley Tse, a Hong Kong born (1968) artist who is based in Los Angeles. What we saw was a tangle of turned wood poles connected by L-shaped joins that wandered across the entrance space. Walking into the next room, we found that the construction meandered into that room as well. The turned wood sections looked like balusters, beadsteads, table legs. A very helpful guard told us that the joins are 3D-printed plastic and that the artist changes the construction to fit whatever the exhibition space is. We found it fascinating and charming that she combined such a traditional technique as wood-turning with contemporary 3D printing, and I followed the pieces in and out of the two rooms. The turned wood pieces were diverse and often lovely.

Negotiated Differences, turned wood and CD printed plastic, 2019

Next door, the Macao Pavilion featured peculiar ceramic objects and installations by Heidi Lau, who grew up in Macao but lives and works in New York City after attending New York University. She described the work as an apparition of Macao. I frankly found the sculptures a bit surreal, like the "Apparition" of the exhibition title. I did not get the titles of the individual sculptures; they are all clay and quite fantastical. Tom did not take the stairs to see the ones inside, but he was quite taken with those in the garden, like the fountain, the first one below.

Next we took the vaporetto to Murano and headed straight for Glasstress. We were disappointed to find that the exhibition was only on Murano this year, supposedly because it was the 10th anniversary of the exhibition, which makes no sense, because it has always had a locatio near the Accademia Bridge - actually I only remember the first Glasstress at that location, and one on Murano. In any event, I was interested that the curators were two artists whose work I have liked for years: Vik Muniz and Koen Vanmechelen. The curators chose works from previous Glasstress shows as well as artists who hadn't shown there before.  We didn't learn till later that the black labels were for the return works and the white ones were for the new ones.  '

I liked the white Ai Wei Wei chandelier with its Twitter birds, security  cameras, hands with middle finger up, and handcuffs, a lovely tribute to surveillance, censorship, and incarceration.  He repeated the middle finger trope in two more works, one a row of 12 hands in different colors.

There was a lovely Reclining Nocturne No. 4 by Karen Lamonte, the artist who evokes female figures through cast glass. 

Juana Vasconcelos had a bright red chandelier, combining colored fibers with the glass. 

I also was moved by Antonio Riello's Ashes to Ashes, chalices with ashes of books, as if they were human remains, with publication date and burning date, as each book's life span. They are difficult to photograph.

And I was delighted to see work by Francisco Toledo, a Mexican artist who has fascinated me for decades. 

Francisco Toledo, Rinoceronet, 2019, glass, mica, detail

Last time Vik Muniz contributed enormous chalices to the show. This time he had a couple of portraits made from murrini, so they look photographic from a distance. These are actually glass, as opposed to photographs of glass compositions. 

Fred Wilson's Iago's Mirror, 2009,  marks a major change in his style that resulted from him representing the United States in the Venice Biennale. By pointing out the blackamoors in shops around Venice and choosing to work in black glass, he sensitized us to the international scope of racism. 

Koen Vanmechelen's installation, Collective Memory, 2019 -  Encyclopedia of Human Rights LABIOMISTA comparative DNA sequence analysis of the Mechelse Padovana CCP23 - was pretty obscure for me,  although it definitely called to mind many issues of contemporary life. 

We enjoyed seeing his black head topped by roosters.

Glasstress is an important exhibition in that it focuses on artists who may not normally work with glass, introducing them working in a different medium and showing viewers the surprising variety of form and expression possible in the medium.

On the way back to the hotel, I made my way to San Zaccaria, to spend a few minutes with the Bellini Sacra Conversazione altarpiece there. I always try to visit this painting in Venice and it always  captures me.This little photograph cannot show do it justice, the way the painted architecture melds with the church architecture, the warm Venetian light that makes the colors glow, the contemplation of the figures and the way they fit perfectly into their setting. This is the painting that taught me always to put the coin in the slot to light the painting you want to see.  

This time I also ventured into the sacristy and S. Tarasio chapel with Andrea del Castagno frescoes in the vaults and stunning sculpted and painted altarpieces by Venetian 14th and 15th century artists. 

This is the polyptych on the right wall of the chapel, by Giovanni and Antonion da Murano and dated 1443, the polyptych of the Body of Christ, with Saints. When we see altarpieces in museums and talk about Renaissance art, we tend to focus on painters, often because they have been carved out of their original settings. The altarpieces in this chapel retain the combination of painting, inlay and sculpture, with the gilding and detail of metalwork, which was a particular skill in early Renaissance Venice. 

Below the chapel is a crypt and I went down to see it. Even in July, the floor was covered with water. When I asked the sacristan about it, he showed me photographs with the water up to the bottom of the arches, a stark reminder of the fragility of Venice.