Venice is conjugated in all tenses

About the contemporary art exhibitions held alongside the Venice Biennale in places steeped in history.

Just because it’s no longer in the headlines doesn’t mean the 60th Venice Biennale is over, far from it! You can still go and explore the ninety national pavilions until November 24, not to mention that thanks to art critic Julie Chaizemartin and her article published in the summer issue of the contemporary art magazine Artpress, you’ll know where to go to discover a few gems while avoiding the crowds that throng the maze of the Serenissima. Because around thirty so-called “collateral” events are held in the setting of sumptuous museums or palaces, rented for a time at a high price by powerful organizers, including art foundations and international art galleries. She has chosen a few of them.

“Far from the tumult of the Arsenale and the Giardini, it is on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, on the fondamente of the Dorsoduro or along the Grand Canal that one must escape,” writes the journalist. “Next to the Accademia bridge, at the end of a hidden alley, a modest door opens onto a luminous garden. Statues there seem crystallized in the spray of the Adriatic. The mauve clusters of wisteria die on their shoulders, marrying the red and purple tones of a reclining nude by Jim Dine. The artist has inserted his imposing sculptures under the auspices of the Gothic architecture of the Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfu.” But that was only until July 21. Too bad! Nevertheless, the Templon art gallery had really found a magical place for “The Dog on the Forge”, the exhibition of the American artist born in 1935 in Ohio, known for his powerfully colored compositions, in which, since the 1960s, he has introduced objects – tools most often, the figure of Pinocchio, hearts or heads seen from the front treated with broad gestures. A place in any case that sublimated “the marriage of contemporary thunder and the fragility of the past” as Artpress so aptly put it.

On the other bank of the Grand Canal, the work of another emblematic pop artist. Like a contrast. This one has the advantage of being visible until November 24, like the Venice Biennale. It is that of Robert Indiana, which is displayed within the Procurati Vecchie, in Saint Mark’s Square. "A remarkable exhibition that traces the journey of the creator of the iconic LOVE, but whose first works are made from assemblages of abandoned port equipment on the quays of the East River," explains Julie Chaizemartin, who does not fail to emphasize to what extent the evocation is inspired "in the heart of the island Venice, like Manhattan, even as the exhibition underlines the taste for circumnavigation or, at least, a fascination for the geographical lines that the artist claims, notably in his Melville Triptych (1962)." It was also on an island that in 2018, at the age of 89, Robert Indiana died in his Victorian chalet. On the island of Vinalhaven (Maine), where he lived as a recluse. A height of irony for the author of the most plagiarized pop work in the world, so recognizable that it obscures the rest of his creation, even the artist's signature itself, much less identifiable than those of pop art masters such as Warhol, Lichtenstein or Wesselman. He is said to have created the concept in the 1960s, just after his breakup with the famous abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015). Pop and abstract had nevertheless had time to live a beautiful love story. "With Elsworth, my whole vision of life changed," Robert Indiana even declared bluntly.

But let's get back to Venice, where, "more than anywhere else, the mixture of styles and eras seems to acquire a power of sublimation," notes the Artpress review. Until June 16, it was at the Biblioteca Marciana that the tarry abstractions of Bernar Venet’s early conceptual years were confronted with the philosophers painted on the ceiling by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. An almost unthinkable encounter, and yet, the sculptor’s pile of coal lying on the ground did not clash, if we are to believe the art critic, “tying in with a certain darkness of the City of the Doges, that of gondoliers, stagnant canals and large traditional capes.”

A little further on: “Bright blue evoking Fra Angelico, small sculptures and dazzling inks made in Rome and Spoleto”. To explore in a new way the influence of his Italian stays on the evolution of Willem De Kooning’s abstract expressionism, at the Accademia Museum, you have until September 15. And just opposite, at the Palazzo Grassi, the immense abstractions of contemporary artist Julie Mehretu will remain on display until January 6, 2025. Exploding with an uncommon pictorial energy. “Also gestural, although less instinctive, more intellectual and cosmic, his painting throws its rain of comets into the Grand Canal”, writes Julie Chaizemartin nicely. On the other hand, the art critic should be warned that, contrary to what she wrote in Artpress, Julie Mehretu is not South African, but American and a native of Ethiopia… I checked fifteen times, so much did the aura of the iconic magazine send me back to the ropes of my imposter syndrome.

But let’s continue. More intimate, the Palazzo Contarini Polignac hosted the Pinchuk Foundation until August 1, which deployed Dare to Dream, a particularly moving exhibition of the Ukrainian contemporary art scene. Including the videos of Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei “showing, with chilling beauty, the tragedy of Ukrainian children deported to Russia”, but also “the blurred and fragmented bodies of Oleg Holosiy and the organ of Zhanna Kadyrova made with fragments of shredded Russian missiles. » Here, the war cry resounded, while until June 30, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, at the Cini Foundation, the nebulous landscapes of the Chinese artist Chu Teh-Chun (1920-2014), sang a form of epic hope. Floating all the better in the atmosphere as the paintings for sale were hung here in the depths of an old swimming pool. Note that the name of this contemporary painter who settled in France in 1955, fleeing the Sino-Japanese war, remains relatively unknown… but that absolutely does not prevent his works of art for sale from reaching new heights on the contemporary art market!

Finally, I will give the floor to Julie Chaizemartin to talk about the Belgian artist born in 1964 who had moved me so much when I discovered her in Avignon without being prepared for it: the incredible Berlinde de Bruyckere, whose wax penitents, bruised bodies and piles of skin invade the nave of San Giorgio Maggiore and its adjoining monastery until November 24. “In front of her gigantic statues that speak of wounds, pain and spirituality, we are overwhelmed by emotion. Then we are reminded of the image of Donatello’s hieratic Saint John the Baptist in the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Magical affinities through the centuries.” This is how our Venetian journey through time ends in a beautiful way…

Article written by Valibri en Roulotte

Illustration: The 60th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, entitled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”, will be open to the public from Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù