After returning from Europe to get some work done here in Japan, I jumped on another airplane to catch a press preview of the Venice Biennale. As mentioned before on these pages, this year we have the once-in-a-decade situation of three major international art shows being staged, which is why people from the international art world are flocking to Europe these days. As I had some work waiting to be done here immediately after the respective openings, I gave up my initial plan to visit Kassel (Documenta) and Munster too, but returned to Tokyo after spending four full days in Venice. That was of course not enough to see all of this huge spectacle, but I'd say I managed to see all I was supposed to within my tight schedule.
As several other journalists (such as Carol Vogel in the New York Times and Herald Tribune) wrote in their previous articles, this time Venice is overshadowed by the image of "death". In a group exhibition at the Italian pavilion, curated by general director Robert Storr, Sophie Calle is showing a video accompanying her mother on her way to death. The artist reportedly received an invitation to exhibit her work at the Biennale on the day her mother passed away. Shown at the Arsenale venue is Yan Zhenzhong’s most well-known work, "I Will Die", a video showing people in various cities around the world that all say this short line in front of the camera.
Displayed outside the Palazzo Grassi (which was bought by Francois Pinault) is Subodh Gupta’s skull sculpture (which was bought by the millionnaire as well). This leads us directly to the British enfant terrible, Damien Hirst, who juggles a variety of death symbols in his mini retrospective show at Palazzo Pesaro.
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In a work of significantly greater dimensions, Jan Fabre is illustrating the death theme much more directly. Items on view in his solo show at Palazzo Benzon include an installation of Fabre’s own costume and set designs, as well as (replicas of) the dead or near-dead artist himself: collapsing against the wall, standing in a sea of blood, covered by thumbtacks and nails stuck in his body (or is it his body made up of thumbtacks and nails?), hanging from the ceiling… All this culminates in an installation showing (another replica of) the artist standing in a room paved with black tombstones. The tombstones don't carry the names of dead persons, but the Flemish names of weevils and other insects instead, along with the dates of their births and deaths. Clues for the riddle are provided on the wall, in the form of names of artists and intellectuals of the 20th century, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Samuel Beckett, Michel Foucault and Jan Fabre himself. The inscription on Fabre’s own timbstone reads "Beetle, 1958-2007".
Bill Viola’s new piece "Ocean Without A Shore", exhibited at San Galo church, is another multi-screen video installation using three monitors set up in the altar area. The screens have approximately the sizes of the saints' statues standing (supposedly) around the altar, and show different, looped images against a backdrop of complete darkness. Appearing out of the depth, and at first very small, are people of all ages and genders that walk slowly toward the viewer. In the front is some kind of waterfall. Everything that happens beyond that line is black and white, but as soon as the figures cross the waterfall and the borderline it marks, their (then soaking wet) images appear in color.
Among them is an old woman who wets all of her body while breathing deep, and a younger woman who only touches the water with her hand and then walks back. In the end, all of the characters return to the area beyond the waterfall, which means that their images return to black and white, and eventually vanish where they came from. With the exception of this crucial difference, the work is reminiscent of 1996’s "Crossing". As indicated in the piece’s title, it’s about traveling back and forth between this world and the beyond, so together with the venue’s characteristic atmosphere, it’s a reflective and religious, site-specific work.
Shown at Palazzo Fortuny is the "Artempo" group exhibition, which is subtitled "Where Times Becomes Art". Items on display are from such iconic artists as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucio Fontana or Hans Bellmer, but also from contemporary, presently active creators including the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Anish Kapoor, On Kawara, James Turrell, and Miyajima Tatsuo. A mixture of this kind one occasionally gets to see at other exhibitions too, but this one here distinguishes itself through the fact that the exhibits are juxtaposed with items from the Fortuny Museum’s own collection. Included are works by Mariano Fortuny himself, who has been devoting himself to the encompassing work of Richard Wagner in stage sets and photographs, as well as an array of unique artworks and artifacts ranging from ancient to medieval to contemporary styles from his private collection. In the dark interior, time seems to be standing still, and totally isolated from the outside world, the visitor feels as if trapped in a "haunted house of art" kind of space dominated by a gothic sense of death. Responsible for the exhibition is a quartet of curators including Jean-Hubert Martin, who curated the legendary "Magiciens de la Terre" and "Africa Remix" shows.
It goes without saying that "death" has always been a central theme in art. Life automatically implies death, and even though not necessarily explicitly, if you pay closer attention to this notion, you will find indications of death every here and there in people’s artistic creations. Our consumer society, however, tends to avoid such philosophical proposition. After studying the Biennale displays, I let my visit ring out with a glass of chilled Prosecco and some thoughts on life and death while watching the clear blue sky above the Mediterranean Sea.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO