Contemporary Art Daily

The Palazzo at the Giardini is a large exhibition hall at one end of the Giardini, the garden home of the national pavilions, in Venice. The Palazzo is one of the two main venues for the survey component of the Biennale, and includes a frantic-looking cafe designed by Tobias Rehberger. Curated by the director of this year’s Biennale, Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition is called “Making Worlds” and includes a wide variety of artists.

There were many compelling sections of the Palazzo, but we’ve broken down nine key selections into three parts. Part 3 features contributions by Blinky Palermo, Simon Starling and Tony Conrad.

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“Himmelsrichtungen” by Blinky Palermo was originally made in 1976 and reconstructed for “Making Worlds” this year. Four colored plastic panels are mounted high in the corners of a small, brick-walled room on black I-beams. A few documents hung on the wall documenting the original installation and it’s production. It’s a welcome grounding for the rest of the show, and a sensitive articulation of the exhibition’s theme.

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Tony Conrad filled a tall room with paintings on unstable paper. The slow yellowing of the paper is related to experimental film.

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Simon Starling included a film installation, a big projector with an elaborate spiral of arms holding the film. The black and white film showed footage of what looked like various stages of production of the projection apparatus.

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Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images available after the jump.

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Artist: James Lee Byars

Venue: Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Venice

Exhibition Title: James Lee Byars Lived Here

Date: June 4 – July 5, 2009

Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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The Palazzo at the Giardini is a large exhibition hall at one end of the Giardini, the garden home of the national pavilions, in Venice. The Palazzo is one of the two main venues for the survey component of the Biennale, and includes a frantic-looking cafe designed by Tobias Rehberger. Curated by the director of this year’s Biennale, Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition is called “Making Worlds” and includes a wide variety of artists.

There were many compelling sections of the Palazzo, but we’ve broken down nine key selections into three parts. Part 2 features contributions by Hans-Peter Feldmann, Nathalie Djurberg and Guyton/Walker.

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“Shadow Play” by Hans-Peter Feldmann used spotlights and rotating platforms covered with everyday objects to generate a shifting landscape of shadows on the wall. Like much of Feldmann’s work, the installation is striking for it’s beguiling plainness.

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Nathalie Djurberg, who won the Silver Lion award for best young artist at the Biennale, fowarded a dark installation: three of her signature disturbing stop-motion animations projected in a garden of monstrous plants.

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Guyton/Walker is a collaborative project by Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. Their installation for the entryway to the Palazzo applies the pair’s usual mode, a combination of the two artists’ approaches to image making applied to the production of printed objects: canvases, panels of dry wall, paint cans, shipping crates. There is a deft, insider wit about much of the work, which draws heavily from Pop Art and has a fruity, rainbow-colored visual aesthetic.

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Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images available after the jump.

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Artist: Liam Gillick

Venue: The German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Exhibition Title: How are you going to behave? A kitchen cat speaks

Date: June 7 – November 22, 2009

Note: There were only three press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos following the first three in the gallery are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images and link available after the jump.

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The Palazzo at the Giardini is a large exhibition hall at one end of the Giardini, the garden home of the national pavilions, in Venice. The Palazzo is one of the two main venues for the survey component of the Biennale, and includes a frantic-looking cafe designed by Tobias Rehberger. Curated by the director of this year’s Biennale, Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition is called “Making Worlds” and includes a wide variety of artists.

There were many compelling sections of the Palazzo, but we’ve broken down nine key selections into three parts. Part 1 features contributions by Wolfgang Tillmans, Saburo Murakami (a standout in an area on the Gutai group), and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.

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Wolfgang Tillmans filled a room with an installation which, according to the plaque, is about color in nature and artificial color in photography. It’s a lovely collection of works, touching many, though not all, of the lines of Tillmans’ practice. See the gallery after the jump for more images of the installation.

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Saburo Murakami made performances that involved puncturing paper stretched over wood using different parts of his body. The resulting “paintings”, made around 50 years ago, were among the earliest artworks to explicitely complicate the relationship between art production and performance. They are also quite beautiful.

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A simple video work by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster mixed interviews with the artist about her long history with the Biennale and light, poetic images she associated with the project. In addition to describing all of the projects she’s completed for Venice, like a drop box for wedding rings on one of the water buses used as public transit there, Gonzalez-Foerster elaborated some of the thought processes that went into the those projects as well as the current one. It is an elegant exercise in transparency and reflection, and different in tone from much of the rest of “Making Worlds.”

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Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images available after the jump.

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The Arsenale is a massive complex of installation rooms just west of the Giardini, the garden home of the national pavilions, in Venice. Cavernous, dark, and seemingly unending, the halls of the Arsenale are one of the two main venues for the survey component of the Biennale. Curated by the director of this year’s Biennale, Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition is called “Making Worlds” and includes a wide variety of artists.

In our second of two segments on the Arsenale, we present two simple, literal works of surprising gravity.

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“Overgrowth” by Ceal Floyer is a single still color photo of a Bonsai projected to the size of a full-scale tree.

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“Seventeen Less One” by Michelangelo Pistoletto fills one of the first rooms of the Arsenale with massive framed mirrors which the artist shattered in a performace at the beginning of the exhibition.

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Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images available after the jump.

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Artist: Martin Boyce

Venue: The Scottish Presentation at the Venice Biennale, the Palazzo Pisani

Exhibition Title: No Reflections

Date: June 7 – November 22, 2009

Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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Artist: Haegue Yang

Venue: The Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Exhibition Title: Condensation

Date: June 7 – November 22, 2009

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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Artist: Roman Ondak

Venue: The Slovak Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Exhibition Title: Loop

Date: June 7 – November 22, 2009

Note: We originally listed the venue as the Czech Pavilion; a reader alerted us that the building now alternates between representing the Czech and Slovak Republics. This year the pavilion is run by the Slovak Republic and features Ondak, a Slovak artist. We apologize for the mistake.

Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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Artist: Lucas Samaras

Venue: The Greek Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Exhibition Title: PARAXENA

Date: June 7 – November 22, 2009

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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