Friday, June 19, 2009

By NICLAS OSTLIND and JARG GEISMAR

Special to The Japan Times

One thing is very present in the contribution of this year's director to the sprawling Venice Biennale of art: Daniel Birnbaum has actually curated an exhibition and not simply put artworks side by side, which, unfortunately, is often the case with presentations of this size. Individual pieces on show have been given adequate space, and installations are immaculate. While each room has a clear identity, they also correspond to one other by conceptual or visual affinities or contrasts that make walking through the exhibition an exciting experience.

Wicked wit: In a comment on the past year's bad news, a fictional house owner floats in a pool in Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's humorous exhibition, "The Collectors," at the Venice Biennale's Danish and Nordic pavilions. JARG GEISMAR PHOTOS

The striking overall impression, however, does hide the fact that there are a number of surprisingly weak pieces included, such as a bleak contribution by Carsten Holler and a series of paintings by Chinese artist Tian Tian Wang. These have the character of students' work; along with a few other choices they are either interesting risks taken by the curator or simply signs of bad judgment.

The director of the Staedelschule in Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, Birnbaum is — at only 46 years old — frequently listed as one of the most important people in the art world. In his career he's worked on the Moscow Biennale and the Yokohama Triennial and written a number of books and publications on art and theory. As the director of the 53rd Venice Biennale, Birnbaum has chosen "Making worlds" as the title of the international exhibition.

The theme makes it clear that artists can use any kind of material in producing mental and physical worlds. Pascale Marthine Tayou's large installation "Human Being" (2007), for example, literally presents an African village with sounds, smells and a bombardment of visual stimulation. The installation is as dynamic and complex as contemporary life itself: The Cameroonian artist combines sculptures, constructions, moving images, ready-mades, textiles and much more. Not only is the sensual aspect overwhelming, the work addresses philosophical issues of colonialism, history and the effects of globalization on everyday life.

Another totally absorbing world is created by Nathalie Djurberg. The Swedish artist has produced a haunted Garden of Eden with meaty-looking flowers and films in which animated clay figures perform violent and sexual acts in a playful and absurd manner. The viewer is taken to a place of paradoxes almost like a joyful nightmare. While Tayou's installation describes a sociopolitical reality, Djurberg's makes a more Surrealistic, cerebral world.

A growing number of countries are now represented in the biennale, with their own new national pavilions located in venues around the city. Among them are Taiwan and Thailand, which are both presenting exhibitions with geopolitical agendas that deal with repression, migration and identity as it relates to places and histories. But the biennale's more established national pavilions have begun to leave behind the idea of exclusively presenting artists from their own country: this year, one finds a Canadian in the British Pavilion and a British artist in the German; while the Danish and Nordic pavilions, curated by artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, include a number of participants from other countries.

In their exhibition "The Collectors," Elmgreen and Dragset have transformed the adjacent pavilions into homes and made up a story about a dead man floating in his swimming pool and his neighbors, who are selling their house. The two Scandinavian artists, who show at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, have mixed elements of fiction and reality in a fascinating way to create a story about fetishism and lust — aspects of both sexuality and art collecting.

A truly fictional world is shown in the Japan Pavilion, which presents Miwa Yanagi's gigantic photographs of dancing women who appear as ancient goddesses with exaggerated, wizened breasts. The pavilion has been covered with black cloth, transforming it into a large tent; inside a similar smaller tent houses a film that gives the impression of a nomadic time when people had not yet settled down. The pavilion has the strong presence of death and power and conveys the idea of destruction and re-creation that one finds in mythologies and religions.

Yoko Ono (right) in Venice

The Golden Lion Prize, selected every biennale by an independent jury, was awarded to the American Bruce Nauman. Though he is one of the most respected and important living artists, the jury's choice was a bad one. Shown in the U. S. Pavilion, Nauman's main contribution is a small retrospective that doesn't bring out the disturbing energy and violence that is essential for his works. From a curatorial point of view, this was a big failure.

A more appropriate winner would have been the contribution to the Dutch Pavilion, "Disorient" (2009), an astonishing installation of films by the artist Fiona Tan. Tan, who is shows in Tokyo at Wako Works of Art, projects two images on opposite walls: one is current footage of countries that Marco Polo traveled through on his way to the Far East; the other explores a store room of stereotypical Chinese knick-knacks. Over both, a voice narrates from the travelogue of Polo, raising urgent questions about trade and labor, wealth and poverty in an unusually riveting, almost seductive way.

Luckily the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to Yoko Ono. Since the '60s, Ono has been enormously important as a member of the Fluxus art movement and as a conceptual artist working with words, actions and instructions. As part of the official program the artist performed at the Arsenale Theater during which — among other actions — she broke a large clay vessel. Pieces were given to the audience, who were asked to come back in 10 years and put the vessel back together, an act of restoration and continuity.

At that time, Ono will be 86.

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