Category: Italy
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Marine sculptures
Marine sculptures Meeting with the installation Migrations by Marguerite Humeau at the Venice Biennale my first reaction is: this isn’t for me. Her strange sculptures don’t appeal to me, falling completely outside of my esthetic framework. The three sculptures have names of important oceanic currents and the accompanying text talks about ‘supernatural, biomorphic sculptures’ and…
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Dadamaino
Dadamaino In the 1960s, when ZERO was active in Germany, the Italian avant-garde started to explore the ‘perceptual dynamics of programmed art’. Dadamaino (Edoarda Emilia Maino) was one of them and the picture shows one of her works from the series Cromorilieve, made in the early 1970s, in which she has fixed solid forms on…
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Vibration of Light
Vibration of Light During the Venice Biennale art works by Heinz Mack are shown in the ‘Sala Sansoviniana’ of the old Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Mack is one of the founders of ZERO (1957), a group of artists with a preference for painting in monochrome, to distance themselves from the abstract expressionism of their contemporaries. They…
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The Prolific Beauty of Our Panicked Landscape
The Prolific Beauty of Our Panicked Landscape They haven’t yet become extinct at exhibitions of contemporary art but they are rare: paintings, canvasses painted with paint. All the bigger my surprise to see three very large paintings by British artist Jadé Fadojutimi at the Venice Biennale. I have chosen here the most beautiful one, and…
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My take on Leigh
My take on Leigh Simone Leigh is prominently present with her sculptures at the Venice Biennale. Her large bronze statue Brick House represents a black woman, her body shaped as a domed African clay house. Leigh applies this more often in her sculptures of women cast in bronze or made of glazed stoneware. It gives…
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Visiting Venice
Visiting Venice The Art Biennale in Venice is still on. I like going there, for the art and for Venice. The visitors, if not in too large numbers, sometimes also contribute to the pleasure of my visit. And when I need a break of the Biennale art I can always walk into the San Zaccaria…
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Two worlds
Two worlds One of the always very rewarding features of the Biennale is the placement of art works in old palazzos and other historical venues spread over the city of Venice. Here we have Martin Puryear’s sculpture ‘Shackled’ (2014) exposed in the school of music that is housed in ‘Palazzo Pisani a Santo Stefano’ (1614/15).…
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Art in context
Art in context Last week we looked at hanji paper works made by Chun Kwang Young. Here we look at some more of them, but this time within the spatial context of the venue in which they are exposed. At the Venice Biennale that venue is the Palazzo Contarini Polignac. Chun’s works are still the…
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A life’s work
A life’s work Since 1980 Korean artist Chun Kwang Young spends most of his time in making small triangular packets of printed mulberry paper. The mulberry paper (hanji), he recovers from old books. The little paper packets, he aggregates into larger objects like sculptures and reliefs. For Chun Kwang Young these art works contain the…
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When the mind says No
When the mind says No Just behind the Ukrainian Pavilion is one of those nice little squares of which Venice has so many. It has a small 13th century church, the Chiesetta della Misericordia, which houses this year the Dutch Pavilion of the Biennale with the video installation When the body says Yes by Melanie…
καιρός remembered 