David Altmejd, The Index, 2007. Image: VoCA

CANADA – THE INDEX, DAVID ALTMEJD

THE CURATORS SAY:

“The work re-imagines the pavilion as an aviary, where birds can nest and feed. It becomes an architectural space, a habitat. The figure (The Giant 2) is at once a body and an environment…Both works are a pertinent look into the inescapable unity of all life.

An organized system whose material components have a logical structural function, The Index functions as an architectural space…a habitat that…exhibits its cavities and protuberances, solids and voids, mysteries and truths.

The Giant 2 personifies the survival of the solitary hero but gives no conclusive indication of any…stamp. (The viewer) attends the passage from a heroic treatment of the individual to the allegorical representation of nature.”

VoCA SAYS:

The use of fragments of mirror throughout the space was successful because it placed the viewer in an unexpected place and enhanced the fairytale feeling in the work. The piece was less formal than his earlier work, for instance the sculpture Altmejd presented at the 2004 Whitney Biennale in New York.

David Altmejd, The Builders, 2005. Image: flashartonline.com

(VoCA has predicted the return of mirror in art since the beginning of the year.) Some evidence of this was evident at New York’s Armory Show in March.

The tree, the birds and the giant as symbols evoked Hans Christian Andersen’s story The Tinderbox, where the soldier enters the hollow trunk of an old tree, or Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, where Alice descends into an otherworldly environment.

Alice in Wonderland. Image: allposters.com

The relationship between the fantastical environment and the outside world may relate to Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, and Christof Buchel’s uncannily hyper-real installations, and even Rirkrit Tiravanija’s art-as-life-as-art performances.

More obviously, the installation bears a resemblance to Matthew Barney’s mythological environments, but in Altmejd’s installation, the viewer’s place has been emphatically positioned. This is important.

Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau. Image: junktown.co.kr

UNITED STATES – AMERICA, FELIX GONZALES-TORRES

THE CURATORS SAY:

“His work treads a fine line between social commentary and personal disclosure, equivocating between the two realms and obscuring the culturally-determined distinctions that separate them.

Gonzalez-Torres used the aesthetic allure of his art to stage a subtle critique of social injustice and intolerance. By creating open-ended, participatory artworks, he entrusted his viewers to engage with and ultimately activate their meaning.”

VoCA SAYS:

There was much debate (among the artists and curators that we were with) regarding the relevance of having Gonzales-Torres, who passed away from Aids in 1996, represent the United States.

Was he relevant? Shouldn’t the Biennale pavilions be reserved for living artists?

VoCA knows Gonzales-Torres’ work well, and almost missed the pavilion altogether. In one room, two stacks of posters Untitled (Republican Years) a blank page with black border, and Untitled, an image of a black ocean, were available for the audience to take away with them.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1991. Image: artnexus.com

In another room, a precise, rectangular pile of black cellophane-wrapped candies Untitled (Public Opinion) filled the room, also to be taken by visitors. As we took the candy, we were struck by what it means to participate in such a work. The act of physically taking something away is bound to an intellectual taking away – if the candy represents a deceased person, then the act represents a kind of personal memorial, not only for the specific person, but for all people.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Public Opinion) 1991. Image: guggenheim.org

This idea of participation relates directly to Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work and others who use participatory actions. It was profound and incredibly relevant to today. A good choice.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 2002. Image: columbia.edu

POLAND – 1:1, MONIKA SOSNOWSKA

THE CURATORS SAY:

“The main reference point for Sosnowska are the experiences of post-war modernisation – the all-too-familiar to the inhabitants of Eastern Europe landscape of housing blocks and service pavilions…

The installation 1:1, like Sosnowska’s other works from the last couple of years, can be viewed as a reference to the practices of the artists of the 1970s (Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and others) and a continuation of the reflection on decay and destruction, but also as a criticism of the art institution via a radical intervention in its architectural tissue. After all, the project serves to ‘exhibit’ the Polish Pavilion itself – a building representative of the 1930s, which, as one of the work’s elements, ‘wrestles’ with another construction growing out from inside it.”

Monika Sosnowska, 1:1, 2007. Image: c. Monika Sosnowska

VoCA SAYS:

The spindly iron structure looked as if some kind of old architectural framework, perhaps what was left of a burned building, had been squeezed into the confines of the stark, rectangular white pavilion. It was about two architectures competing, about how art is not meant to fit within the gallery space. This work seemed to express frustration with the hegemony of art systems.

Art, it seemed to be saying, is part of life, part of history and of urban culture. We should thus be encouraged to see art outside of what fits in a gallery, where it can literally be squashed by particular context. A strong, somber work.