“May You Live
in Interesting Times”
P
aolo Baratta, President of the Venice Biennale,
defines as follows the value of the initiative
that characterizes the 58th edition of the Art
exhibition: “a decisive challenge to all
oversimplifying attitudes”.
The theme, which may seem very generic,
introduces one of the aspects that lead to
reflections and provocations about the visionary
view beyond cosmopolitanism and globalization.
He is pleased in seeing more than 50% of young
people, aged under 26, visiting the Biennale as
“partner visitors”. In other words: the visitor, the
observer, as an integrating part of the success of
the experience, the one who provokes the
significance of Art. In fact, there is a
phenomenology that binds him indissolubly
to the taste for revelation and a passive-active
reaction: “first, the necessary disorientation, then
the involvement, followed by the discovery”,
as Ralph Rugoff, curator of this edition, explains.
Rugoff has made this assumption his own, more
for the content than for the merit, making explicit
the reasons for going on a journey in the existing
categories of thought, opening new horizons
through alternative interpretations that modify
the perception of reality. In the Giardini and in
the Arsenale there are 90 national participations
that activate opportunities to consider new points
of view and understand the variety of the
different “orders” and rules of the Art world,
in the simultaneous coexistence of voices that
characterize the exhibition. As the curator
reminds us, Art can be a kind of guide for “how
to live and think in interesting times”, besides
carrying out a social function that includes
promoting pleasure in the absolute sense and
the critical thinking that can question one’s
dogmas, one’s beliefs. Without light, Art does not
belong to the dimension of sight, to the discovery
of the shape and those contrasts, chiaroscuros,
and chromatisms that define a rich plasticity,
that is satisfying for the fascinating effect of
simultaneously concealing and revealing.
Without light, Art belongs to other senses,
to another cosmos of stimuli and emotions.
Here below are some emblematic artworks that
combine the power of the cognitive experience
and the expressive potentiality of a lighting
aimed at a synesthetic involvement.
At the Corderie, Hisakado’s leaning wall is
a metaphoric representation of the collapse
of structures and systems of values. It is a scenery
flat, on which a movie of a woman lying in
a forest is projected. The surface is interrupted
by a hole, like a porthole, a black hole that leads
to our subconscious.
Behind the hole the quintessence of a cave
is concealed, the primordial place of instinct,
the place of dreams, to which the artist allows
access by means of a double vision in a
completely symbolic section. On one side the
dimension of perceived reality, on the other the
irrational sphere, that which lies submerged
within us. Hisakado’s vision is all-encompassing,
it is almost a metaphor of the Biennale itself. The
interpretation of reality and the perception of the
deep unknown alternate in the entire exhibition.
In the miniature replica of the American town of
the TV series Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, Alex
Da Corte offers a perspective of the world seen
from above, as if the observer was a giant looking
at people’s life. However, looking better, the
unmistakable lack of life and people evokes
a sensation that ranges from nostalgic to
apocalyptic. The representation of the luminous
skeleton of the astronaut Robert Henry Lawrence,
who died in an airplane crash is even more
dramatic, a testimony of eternal fluctuation
in the darkness of space. However, there are
numerous reflections belonging to a wide
spectrum of human action and feeling. And so the
artist Renate Bertlmann arranges a field of red
roses made of crystal, pierced by a sharp steel tip,
evoking the myth of the timeless human condition
of passion and pain. Once again light gives
a sense to the message, making the sensations
that the material evokes shine and vibrate.
A natural light that becomes fully artificial in
Jitish Kallat’s installation in the Indian pavilion,
where a projection of the letter Gandhi wrote
to Hitler in 1939 dynamically scrolls on the
ground, prospectively encountering an
immaterial, luminous, and misty gate that marks
the passage towards the awareness and
knowledge of historical truths.
Last but not least, the vision of Mark Justiniani
in the Philippine pavilion, where the presence
of islands and outposts for observing the arrival
of cyclones and typhoons that threaten the
oriental coasts is evoked. These atolls are also
a window looking out at the riches of the Earth,
allowing a glance at the underground levels,
in endless replication, with objects and magical
shiny minerals, which remind us of the sense
of precariousness, just like the glass floor that
separates the observer from the volcanic
and ephemeral scene appears to be fragile
and inconsistent, a metaphor of life and the
unstable nature of its ways.
Sinistra / Left
Covering Letter,
di / by Jitish Kallat
Padiglione India /
India Pavilion, Arsenale
Destra / Right
Synchronicity,
di / by Apichatpong
Weerasethakul
e / and Tsuyoshi
Hisakado, Arsenale
Pagina a fianco /
Opposite page
Island Weather,
di / by Mark Justinian
Padiglione Filippine /
Philippines Pavilion,
Arsenale
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LUCE 329 / SPECIALE 58. BIENNALE INTERNAZIONALE D’ARTE A VENEZIA