Small World Crammed on Biennale’s Grand Stage

The French billionaire François Pinault has transformed the old Customs House into a museum for his collection. Left, a painting by Cindy Sherman and a sculpture by Jeff Koons.
Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Small World Crammed on Biennale’s Grand Stage
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published: June 11, 2009(New York Times Permalink)
The 53rd Venice Biennale is tidy, disciplined, cautious and unremarkable, suggesting a somewhat dull, deflated contemporary art world, professionalized to a fault, in search of a fresh consensus.

A “virtual” Venice Biennale to go on show in Moscow

A “virtual” Venice Biennale to go on show in Moscow
Video footage of pavilion and Arsenale exhibitions on display at the Garage

(Source Art Basel daily edition)
Dasha Zhukova, the founder of the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow and partner of billionaire Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, has told The Art Newspaper that video footage of the national pavilions in the Giardini and the displays in the Arsenale will be shown on large screens in the gallery for one month from 15 June. The footage also contains artist interviews as well as a commentary by Russian artist Gosha Ostretsov. “A lot of people haven’t been able to travel to Venice this year because of the financial situation,” she said. So Ms Zhukova sent a team to the biennale to film the displays and bring the show back to Moscow.

Speaking in Venice last Friday, she also revealed plans for a large exhibition of contemporary Russian art to be held at the Garage later this year. It will go on an international tour. A venue has already been found in Paris, although she declined to identify it. Talks are also underway to send the exhibition to “Berlin, London, New York and Los Angeles”.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/A-virtual-Venice-Biennale-to-go-on-show-in-Moscow/17462

Preview of the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009

Preview of the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009

Its that time again, when the international art community packs its bags and heads for Venice. The 53rd Venice Biennale is now open, and in this film, made in collaboration with the Guardian newspaper, art critic Adrian Searle presents his roundup. Whats hot? Whats not? Find out here. Check out the next issue of TateShots for more Venice coverage and artist interviews.

Venice Biennale Opens Showing Works by Over 90 Artists from all Over the World

Ragnar Kjartansson, The End, 2009. Performance installation. Commissioned by the Center for Icelandic Art. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik. Photo: Rafael Pinho

Venice Biennale Opens Showing Works by Over 90 Artists from all Over the World

(Source ArtDaily)VENICE.- The 53rd International Art Exhibition, entitled Making Worlds, directed by Daniel Birnbaum, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, and chaired by Paolo Baratta, will open to the public from Sunday June, 7th to Sunday November, 22nd 2009 in the Giardini (50,000 m2) and the Arsenale (38,000 m2) as well as in various other locations around the city.

The Director of the 53rd Exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, has been Rector of the Staedelschule Frankfurt/Main and its Kunsthalle Portikus since 2001. Making Worlds, presented in the renewed Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the Giardini and in the Arsenale, is a single, large exhibition that articulates different themes woven into one whole. It is not divided into sections. Considering collectives, it comprises works by over 90 artists from all over the world and includes many new works and on-site commissions in all disciplines. “The title of the exhibition, Making Worlds – says Director Daniel Birnbaum – expresses my wish to emphasize the process of creation. A work of art represents a vision of the world and if taken seriously it can be seen as a way of making a world. The strength of the vision is not dependent on the kind or complexity of the tools brought into play. Hence all forms of artistic expression are present: installation art, video and film, sculpture, performance, painting and drawing, and a live parade. Taking ´worldmaking´ as a starting point, also allows the exhibition to highlight the fundamental importance of certain key artists for the creativity of successive generations, just as much as exploring new spaces for art to unfold outside the institutional context and beyond the expectations of the art market. Making Worlds is an exhibition driven by the aspiration to explore worlds around us as well as worlds ahead. It is about possible new beginnings—this is what I would like to share with the visitors of the Biennale.”

For the direction of the exhibition Daniel Birnbaum is supported by Jochen Volz, artistic organization. Additional advice is provided by an international team of correspondents consisting of Savita Apte, Tom Eccles, Hu Fang, and Maria Finders.

On occasion of the 53rd International Art Exhibition – the Foundation La Biennale di Venezia inaugurates a number of important structural and organisational developments:

At the Arsenale, the Italian Pavilion has been enlarged from 800 to 1,800 square meters, now opening out to the Giardino delle Vergini and adjacent to a new public entrance. Here a newly constructed bridge links the far side of the Arsenale to the Sestiere di Castello. This renewed Italian Pavilion will be reserved for exhibitions organised by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs. The Italian participation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition is curated by Beatrice Buscaroli and Luca Beatrice. Furthermore, the Arsenale’s exhibition spaces have been extended by developing a larger part of the Giardino delle Vergini (Garden of the Virgins), now measuring 6.000 square meters and offering an enchanting new exhibition space for the main exhibition. Read on...
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31263

Biennale di Venezia, http://www.labiennale.org/it/Home.html

Center for Icelandic Art, http://www.cia.is/

Fiona Tan's Disorient to Represent the Dutch Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia

Fiona Tan, Disorient, 2009. HD installation, colour, 5:1 surround, 2 HD-cam safety masters, 2 HD projectors, 2 computers, surround amplifier, surround speakers, edition of 4 © Fiona Tan, courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

Fiona Tan's Disorient to Represent the Dutch Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia
(Source ArtDaily)
VENICE.- New York-based Dutch curator Saskia Bos selected Fiona Tan to represent the Netherlands at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Tan is working on a new audio-visual installation conceived especially for the presentation in Venice.

Fiona Tan describes herself as ‘a professional foreigner, whose identity is defined by that which I am not’. Her work will never be a straightforward search for truth or identity: she uses a variety of means to unravel processes of recollection and fill in story lines, sometimes using found footage with which to confront the observer with informal history. Through professional analysis and the poetic translation of her observations, she creates images that become symbols of the fading memory of a fast-changing world. Her installations and films are the result of her ongoing investigation into representation and the role of images and portraits in contemporary culture. Sometimes Tan’s work refers to what is known in art history as ‘provenance’. This was also the title of a recent installation by Tan at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in which she used surprising means to translate the 17th-century gaze into the present day.

For the Biennale, a new work by Tan will refer to Venice’s pivotal position in the history of geostrategy in the time before the discovery of new routes to Asia diluted the city’s power. Tan’s fascination with geography, travellers and their journeys has led her to explore the biographies of famous merchants and the desire to acquire new experiences and possessions. Her project Disorient attempts to bridge the centuries by creating connections with both contemporary day-to-day reality and with the symbolic past that every visitor to Venice wants to grasp.

Fiona Tan (b. 1966) has lived and worked in Amsterdam for more than 20 years. The daughter of a Chinese father and an Australian mother, she was born in Indonesia, but the country’s repressive regime drove her family to Australia. She went on to study in Germany and the Netherlands, which makes her past comparable to that of an immigrant family or a child of the diaspora.
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31246

La Biennale di Venezia, 53rd International Art Exhibition

La Biennale di Venezia 06 | 06 | 2009 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice, 6th June 2009
The International Jury of the 53rd International Art Exhibition, comprised of Jack Bankowsky (USA), Homi K. Bhabha (India), Sarat Maharaj (South Africa), Angela Vettese (Italy, president), and Julia Voss (Germany) has decided to confer the official awards for the 53rd International Art Exhibition as follows:

Golden Lion for best National Participation
to the United States of America
(Pavilion in the Giardini)
Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens
Commissioners: Carlos Basualdo, Michael R. Taylor
http://www.labiennale.org/it/Home.html