So I was in Venice last week for the launch of the Biennale. There is so much online this year about it all that I’m hesitant about adding yet another summary. But having trudged diligently in the rain to just about every pavilion – though I still managed to miss loads – I feel that I should give a quick few thoughts. The main exhibition, which occupies the giant Arsenale space and the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini, is very good. In fact, it’s better than it sounds on paper mainly because of the focus it gives Outsider art as a way to unlock the potential for not only new insights, of an intuitive nature naturally, but also for a kind of controlled insanity. The exhibition in the Arsenale leads to a pivotal moment about halfway through when everything seems to tumble into some dark parallel universe, hinted at by Cindy Sherman's curated room and typified perhaps by Ryan Trecartin’s videos of a world that appears almost post-human, and compulsive viewing. Although that work, like so many presentations in the pavilions in the Giardini, was almost ruined by unnecessarily over-produced presentation structures. The videos were amazing though and even though there was so much to see, I watched them all from start to finish. The content of Trecartin's videos stood up to the elaborate presentation but in general I came away from quite a few of the pavilions feeling that the focus seemed more on architectural installations and less on the works they had been created to host. Jeremy Deller's British pavilion also stood out as thoughtful and modest. My favorite pavilion was Poland’s presentation of Konrad Smolenski’s work, in which two giant bronze bells began a series of (computer) programmed rings which were then fedback via some very large speakers creating a low level audio hum that slowly built up in the space, layer upon layer, until it caused a series of metal lockers to violently vibrate. It was an overwhelming work that really made sculpture out of sound and I was glad to have experienced it. Back to the curated exhibition again – The Encyclopedic Palace – and just to say that this current trend for curating non-art objects into exhibitions - and there were some incredible objects not least Jung's famous Red Book - as a way to unlock new readings, can be found closer to home – in Mark Leckey’s curated exhibition currently at Nottingham Contemporary, Brian Dillon’s Curiosity at Turner Contemporary, which I am going to see next week, Ralph Rugoff's forthcoming exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Rosemary Trockel’s recent A Cosmos at the Serpentine as well as our very own Relatively Absolute. Venice this year for me didn’t point to a future direction in art, rather it oddly closed a moment. I enjoyed it though.

Tags: venice |