The segment travel to Venice started on June 23rd ,(part 1) the arrival date, June 24
(part 2) and lasted until June 28th, being dedicated to touring the 2022 Biennale Arte
San Marco Square
At San Marco's beautiful Square, an old palace, owned now by the GENERALI Insurance company, is now open to the public for the first time, and offers a large exhibition and event space.
The renovated heritage Renaissance landmark, the Procuratie Vecchie - a 500-year-old building of the 16c, whose arched facade runs the full length of the square’s north-west side, became a global hub for social purpose and an host to its new social foundation,
(Procuratie -the second-highest dignitaries in the government of the Republic of Venice, in charge of administering the treasury of the Church of Saint Mark as well as the financial affairs of state wards and trust funds established on behalf of religious and charitable institutions)
The visit's purpose at the Generali building's 3 floors was to view the Louise Nevelson exhibition
Monochromatic Sculptor, born in the Ukraine (1899 -1988) who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1905. The family settled in Rockland, Maine, where she met and eventually married Charles Nevelson in 1920, whom she later divorced, after the couple moved to NYC. She met, and ultimately worked as an assistant for, the legendary Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and also met the Canadian fashion designer Arnold Scaasi in the late 1960s, (who designed for several First Ladies) and they developed a close relationship that resulted in Scaasi designing much of her wardrobe for the rest of her life.
Nevelson collected discarded objects—namely wooden furniture parts and woodcuts—assembled them, and painted them entirely black (with occasional forays into white or gold). instilling in the recycled still objects spirituality.
Nevelson plaza by Trump Tower is named after her and Israeli museum has a cast monument of her.
At the Arsenale -Ship Yard
The 16c huge Shipyard space with its high ceiling houses the pavilions' exhibits.
Biennale at the Aesenale -Exhibitions
By the Entrance
Meat Row
The narrow entrance passage leading toward the Center Exhibition area at the Arsenale greet the visitors, with butchered fragments of .cattle and human limbs hanging above their heads, between the the old shipyard's walls. Quite a repulsive scene.
Italian artist Giulia Cenci. who lives and works between Tuscany and Amsterdam, Incorporates everyday found objects and repurposes unwanted materials in her work which is Inspired by the discarded farmyard machinery she witnessed growing up in the Tuscan countryside. Her sculptures and immersive installations, are a hybrid of the natural with the synthetic, exploring themes of technology and nature.
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Wu Tsang, Of Whales
Born 1982 in Worcester, Massachusetts, based in New York and Berlin,
The award-winning film maker and performance artist, known for her cross-disclipinary work that straddles narrative, and documentary film, as well as live performance and video installations, showcases a new multidisciplinary project.
The 6 hours video installation (trailer) is based on the artists feature-length film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and psychedelic ocean environments as a site of cosmology,
The video generated from XR (“extended reality”) technologies, is positions outdoors on a 52-foot LED screen above the water, uniquely serene space, inside two picturesque 16th-c arches of the historic structure of the Giaggiandre, in the Arsenale complex,
The film's, immersive installations and performances surface conveys the capacity for art to express a multiplicity of voices.
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Armstrong Mitchell Hydraulic Crane at the Aesenale on the dockside
A massive machine and the only one of its kind left in the world,
Lorenzo Quinn's Giant Hands sculptures, could be seen stored at the opposite end
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Map of the Pavilions' layout- Arsenale
Center Stage - Post Humanism
Precious Okoyomon, Earth Before the End of the World
The Nigerian-American artist, poet, and chef. who live and work in NYC produces
vast installations, which often incorporate plants as well as poetry and sculpture, celebrate the chaos of nature
In this exhibit in a fiction garden, sculptural topographies, composed of living, growing, decaying, and dying materials, including rock, water, wildflowers, snails, and vines are staged. For the artist, nature is inseparable from the historical marks of colonization and enslavement.
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Robert Grosvenor, Block of Water Diego Marcon -The Parents’ Room Barbara Cruger
American contemporary sculptor, Disturbing digital film/video work Newark, NJ
installation artist, and draftsman Conceptual artist
Hybrid - Machine- Human Creatures - Seduction of the CYBORG
American artist and filmmaker Italian artist
Man and machine fused
Tau Luise Simone Leigh
Rebecca Horn -kiss Elias Sime - Red Leaves Teresa Solar-Tunnel Boring
Gabriel Chaile Niki de Saint Phalle- Gwendoline Candice Lin
Margaret Humeau This French artist's supernatural, biomorphic sculptures could have been lifted from a work of science fiction, an homage to surrealist creature sculpture, transitioning to an ancient archaic imaginary.
Sandra Mujinga Born 1989, Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo Lives and works in Berlin and Oslo Woven threads post human Chieftain leaders
Mire Lee a South Korean artists who lived in Amsterdam. His kinetic sculptures - meat hanging installation suggest the tension of states of aliveness
Jes Fan, who Lives in NYC and Hong Kong, is trained as a glass-maker, and frequently creates bulging hand-blown glass orbs, which he injects with hormonal substances.
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Powerlessness
Louise Bonnet -Swiss Raphaela Vogel -German Diego Marcon - Italian
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History of Night and Destiny of Comets, an installation by Gian Maria Tosatti that combines literary references, visual art, theater instalation and performance. and conveys a reflection on the destiny of humanity poised between a past of dreams and mistakes and a future yet to be, the challenging balance between development and sustainability and between ethics and profit, across the rise and fall of Italian industrialization, from the 1960s to the present.
My post on s a shut down of such an industrialize town - Crespi d'adda in north of Italy corresponds with what is being conveyed via the installation..
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China Pavilion - META-SCAPE
Exhibitor: Liu Jiayu, Wang Yuyang, Xu Lei,
The exhibition aims at representing the “Structure of Understanding” created by the Chinese nation in the process of comprehending and transforming the world and exploring the civilization landmark set by mankind for the coexistence of the future world by taking the “Scape” in traditional Chinese culture as a principle concept, holding the attitude of transcending time indicated by “Meta”. The most totalitarian state censures by the state's Artificial intelligence astute manifestation of security espionage products, Mountain space ship like , 3D printers for sculptures and other objects for art creation also incorporating Chinese culture concepts and religions aspects of Zen Buddhism
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Garden of Knowledge Homage to a reflection on the work of the scientist :
His book Kitab Al-Jabr Wa-al-Muqabala, introduced to Europe under the title Dixit Algorizmi, was the first scientific text to present algebra as a discipline independent of geometry and arithmetic.
The layout is based on the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah) where al-Khwārizmī studied and worked. One of my favorite pavilions,
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Ghana pavilion - Black Star - The Museum as Freedom
Entitled after the Black Star that symbolises Ghana through its flag, national football team, and most important monuments, it also became a symbol of the connection of Africa with its diasporas through Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and his Back-to-Africa restoration movement revived now in Ghana. The Pop decorative art is homage to the great black continent. Recreating new proud identity to overcome yeas of colonialism
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Slovenia Pavilion - paces of human imagination Marko Jakše - Surrealist Artist
Big paintings of animals and strange crea- tures dominate over humans, existing species are joined by hermaphrodites and apparitions from romanticized fantasy islands, unknown expanses of the universe, or the future.
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Using steel, limestone, wood, and glass, sculptor Niamh O’Malley shapes, and assembles objects to create a purposeful landscape of forms. Sensitive to architecture the closed world during the Corona is reflected in
constructions of shelves and other housing objects.
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Lebanon Pavilion Destruction of the country
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A monolith Palm tree-like installation that occupies and consumes the space it inhabits. The surrealistic palm branches monster creature. rooted in earth, is an. homage to trees in a technological world +++++++++++++++++ UAE Pavilion - All Human are Equals
Emirati artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim developed this single, room-filling installation commissioned for the Emirates Pavilion. Dozens of human-sized, biomorphic sculptures cluster in undulating colour and movement – suggesting bodies or trees, metamorphosis, and mutation Natural earth related material. ++++++++++++++++++++ Malta Pavilion - Diplomazija Astuta
Through induction technology, molten steel droplets fall from the sky into seven rectangular pools of water, each representing a subject in the eimagines Caravaggio’s seminal Maltese altarpiece The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist as a kinetic, sculptural installation..A secular constellation of a divine phenomenon- firing falling from the top. ++++++++++++++++
Gender Identity Themes
New Zealand - Paradise Camp
Interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara presents an ensemble exhibition, from the unique perspective of Fa‘afafine – “in the manner of a woman” or third gender in Sāmoa. Unidentifiable gender
men raised to function as women,
address intersectionality between decolonisation, identity politics, and climate crisis from a staunchly Pasifika perspective.
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Skuja Braden from Latvai and Melissa D. Braden
from CA US a Lesbian couple, collaboration
presents a multilayered installation that maps the mental, physical, and spiritual areas within the artists’ home.
Whimsical and disturbing images in porcelain, comes to life in everyday objects, fountains, bendy hoses, and male and female physiques and nature, with political social gender activism
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The hanging art works explores transactions between cultures and forms of knowledge that disobey the exoticist musealisation of dissident practices. By imagining decolonial futures that may rid us of realities of oppression subduing diverse human, nonhuman, and more-than-human life forms today
Argentina Pavilion Mónica Heller builds an all-encompassingfantasy world setting, inspired both by the multisensory architectural design of Argentine suburban bingo halls and by the surrealist universes of interwar painting and poetry. digitized stimulation creates the imagery ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Those were all the artists and pavilions visited upon at the Arsenale that day.
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By By Aesenale
Dinner at: "Rosa Rossa" restaurants Pizzeria Calle della Mandola +39 0415234605
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After dinner the paid concert to which 5 of us went was fabulous.
Vivaldi Concert at Church of San Vidal
It is a former church, and now an event and concert hall at one end of the Campo Santo Stefano
Erected in 1084 by Doge Vitale Falier. the church was destroyed in 1105 by a major city fire. Reconstruction continued for centuries and was finished by the 16th-17th c
At present in 2022, the church is deconsecrated, and the chamber music group" Interpreti Veneziani" performs concerts there.
Vivaldi "Four seasons"
The church's main altarpiece is
a San Vidal on Horseback with eight saints (1514) by Vittore Carpaccio; in the painting, four of the saints flank the saint on a white horse, while four are in the balconies above.
Vittore Carpaccio - a renaissance artist , painted in Venice between f15 &16 c. contemporary of Titian and Giorgione, noted for his decorative art - mostly large-scale,
To be Continued...