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Art Review: A World's Fair of art From the awesome to the banal, the Venice Biennale never ceases to fascinate Sunday, July 18, 1999 By Elaine A. King
VENICE, Italy - The 48th Venice Biennale, made up of 59 foreign exhibitions and 103 artists, is a bigger display of contemporary art than ever as it portrays late '90s postmodern art.
Elaine A. King is professor of art history and theory at Carnegie Mellon University.
Harald Szeeman, noted Swiss curator and director of this Biennale, avoided a general theme because he felt we no longer can define culture in terms of physical boundaries or as being local or global. But he did place an emphasis on the importance of youth and the need to blur borders.
Szeeman, in his late 60s, was a driving force behind modifying Venice's former Aperto, a large open space now devoted to emerging artists. His rationale was to rehabilitate unused sections of the city to provide artists with challenging environments. Unfortunately, the work began only months before the Biennale's opening. Many artists did not have time to use the extraordinary setting -- consisting of colossal columns, crumbling arches, dock settings and timber-vaulted ceilings -- that often overpowers the art.
The site mixes mature artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman and Sigmar Polke with unknowns. Bourgeois and Nauman received Golden Lion awards as masters of contemporary art.
Despite the unevenness of the national pavilions, several artists are impressive, and some fail, such as Ann Hamilton in the United States Pavilion.
Although she has demonstrated an outstanding ability for complex and strong installations, including "offerings" in the 1991 Carnegie International, she falls short here. Inspired by the pavilion's architecture, she aimed to explore symbolic connections to American social theory and Thomas Jefferson's philosophy of democratic space. Rejecting the modernist idea of the "white cube" gallery, she allows light to flow and engage interior and exterior space. In four chambers, dazzling magenta powder slowly, ceaselessly trickles down encrusted Braille-covered white walls holding passages from poet Charles Reznikoff's "Testimony: The United States, 1885-1925."
Hamilton, in a hushed tone, reads Lincoln's second Inaugural address, forming the connective element throughout the galleries.
Although one needs to read the curators' wall text in order to comprehend the artist's intention, visually the mysteriously sensuous elements are captivating. But the monumental steel and glass grid wall fronting the 1929 neo-classical pavilion and a wooden table with tied flowing handkerchiefs overload and confuse the intent.
There are several artists, however, whose work packs a powerful punch. William Kentridge's black and white digitally animated drawings are critiques denouncing evils of globalization and evoke a similarity to silent Russian and German expressionist film.
Although Katharina Fritsch's "Rat King" (1992-93)isn't new, it is compelling. Five looming black rats arranged in a circle address issues of entanglement, power and survival.
Berthold Horbelt and Wolfgang Winter's clever plastic water crate, a structure titled "Pavilion for an Unknown Nation," is a fantastic construction functioning between sculpture and architecture. Their buildings -- made from recycled crates -- not only provide shelter for weary visitors but also offer innovative construction alternatives.
In "Marché aux puces" (subtitled to mean Bargain Basement of Cut-Price Information), Wang Du calls attention to the flood of worldwide news information and its link to mass media and rampant consumerism. Inspired by newspaper articles, his satirical three-dimensional still life of caricatured plaster figures of media VIPs renders magazine and television personalities into sculptural essences. Monica Lewinsky and banned Joe Camel dominate as they besiege us electronically. In an arresting carnival-like figurine setting, Du interprets the Asian public's encounter with the Western media assault.
The most exceptional video is by Doug Aitken, who received an award for "Electronic Earth," blending narrative and experimental electronic cinema. This mesmerizing installation comprises a maze of darkened rooms and full-size wall screens, capturing the nocturnal urban wanderings of an African-American in an isolation recalling Edward Hopper paintings.
Thanks to a $1 million renovation of the Arsenale area, there seems to be a shift in interest away from the 30 national pavilions housed in the city's gardens. Perhaps this is appropriate as more nations are free to exhibit and artists require increased space.
Since many artists selected for the certified pavilions represent favorite sons and daughters of the art world, the freestyle nature of the renovated area provides liberation from the establishment.
In past Biennales, Asian and Chinese artists were ignored but are now noticeable at the Arsenale. I welcome this enlarged open-ended art bazaar where "anything goes" and time determines what stays and what fades. In all, there is a varied sampling of "art things," resembling shopping mall culture.
Viewers are plunged into a world where art functions as a type of entertaining interactive sport. Visitors must complete the art visual experience by relating to the environment and systems of the artists at both the pavilions and Arsenale.
If an award for stupidity were called for, Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy deserve the prize for their childish rambling installation of endless debris and kitsch. Their tickle-one's-fancy film of lesbian sex projected on a staircase is pointless.
The subject of time and history is treated successfully in the Japanese, German and Canadian Pavilions. Japan, in my opinion, warranted the Golden Lion Award for the best pavilion.
Tatsuo Miyajima's time-based installation "Revive Time" represents a countdown of the 20th century. In this blue chamber, the visitor confronts the peaceful sensibility of a Japanese temple and the exactness of high technology. Set in Venetian time in the year 1999, 2,450 blue-light-emitting LED and ID units attached to the wall count down time.
A futuristic theme is conveyed in the German Pavilion. Rosemarie Trockel's double screen video called "Sleeping Pill" portrays men, women and children awakening, falling asleep and in sedation or suspended in peculiar white bubble-garments.
We are witnesses to a type of 2001 pageant; the willing participants in a white laboratory emerge tranquil and fulfilled. Army cots are provided for visitors to share the nurturing sleep ritual.
To some, "The Whole Catastrophe," Tom Dean's portrayal of the death of modernism and the fragmented anything-goes-world of postmodernism, in the Canadian Pavilion, may emerge too innocent and simple, but I found it moving and appropriate. In a time where all boundaries of morality and social order appear to have dissolved, Dean's apocalyptic scene is fitting.
Lining the curved space are 10 dot-patterned screen-prints, and on each, one of the Ten Commandments is printed. Throughout the floor space, 48 cast bronze dogs, fragmented body parts and excrement are placed randomly. At the end of this trail we confront a stack of newspapers on the Kosovo tragedy.
Although the Biennale contains a widespread scope of new-sprung work (some engaging but others infantile), including installation art, video art and some good painting, overall it echoes widely familiar themes of ordinariness, post-grunge and the everyday.
All told, the Biennale, which continues through Nov. 7, embraces a global style inspired by media, popular culture and a need to celebrate day-to-day banality. Academic idealism underlies much of the work that emphasizes viewer-interactivity.
Examples of this trend have been evident in major contemporary art exhibitions. We can hope that November's Carnegie International will set a better example. Bridging art and life has become dull!
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