Thursday, June 13, 2013

Circuits in history

Now that we have a few days respite from traveling it's time to reflect...
Of all the artworks and pavilions we saw at the Venice Biennale, two works stood out: Ai Wei Wei’s piece, SACRED and Bill Culbert’s FRONT DOOR OUT BACK - both ‘whacked’ you but in totally different ways. SACRED takes up the central nave of Sant'Antonin church with its six large iron boxes, into which we could peek to see miniature worlds recreated from his lengthy incarceration by the Chinese government. 
Ai Wei Wei being interrogated, another of him showering, sitting on the toilet, or sleeping outstretched on his back, and always two blank-faced uniformed guards standing over him. In every cell he is stoically coping with being hemmed in  - it was horrifying and fascinating at the same time, so we waited patiently to get to those tiny windows. The only detail of the cell's exterior Ai Wei Wei said he observed on his release was the number on the door: 1135, fittingly each of the boxes’ smooth surfaces are etched only with this …More







Culbert’s seven different works in FRONT DOOR OUT BACK, simply took our breath away with its luminescent beauty making the ordinary extraordinary. Seeing it as we came out of the bright Venetian light into its brick building’s soft dark shadows, we felt a little dreamlike as one does when confronted by the familiar made unfamiliar, home but not as we remembered it… More


 














The theme of the Biennale this year, The Encyclopedic Palace, brought a huge array of outsider art into its sacrosanct arena, but sometimes the juxtapositions of spiritual, occult, and downright obsessive alongside the conceptually challenging was enough to send you spinning towards the nearest Espresso machine! I found myself wondering: are we seeing a desperate search for any possibilities that might take us out of the material crisis we’re experiencing? If so, it's intriguing the circuits in history this is taking us through.

2 comments:

  1. What a wonderful experience the Venice Bienniale must be! I enjoyed reading about Ai Wei Wei; activist and artist.

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    1. Hi Isabel

      it really is an amazing experience, worth any effort to get there! If you're interested there's a great novel that explores similar concerns in Ai Wei Wei's work: Beijing Coma by Ma Jian - it's very well reviewed here:

      http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/kong.htm

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