One aspect of the Biennale that I really appreciated was the opportunity to see a wide variety of work across different time periods. One artist, Arthur Bispo de Rosario, a Brazilian former navy man, did most of his artwork after being admitted to an asylum in 1938 after sharing a vision he had that God had asked him at the end of time to present those things in the world that he judged worthy of being saved. He worked in wood, textiles and many other media. The embroidery he did often used blue thread that he unraveled from uniforms at the psychiatric hospital. The Biennale featured a room-sized installation of his work.
In another large but quite different installation, Matt Mullican, a contemporary artist, presented collections of pages grouped on many room dividers. On these pages, using signs , symbols and schematic drawings, he tried to create the sense of a complete vision of the universe and explore the contrast between lived experience and objective reality.
Originally from Senegal and later studying and working in Paris in the middle to late 1950’s, Papa Ibra Tall moved his art from the sort of aesthetic principles he had studied in Europe to strong color and a decorative way of working to represent stories and myths from Senegal. Moving back to Senegal after independence, he continued to root his art in the traditions of Senegal.
In an enormous room, presented singly and in small groups were the eerie life-size plastic sculptures of Pawal Althamer. Entitled The Venetians (2013), the faces were of local Venetians cast in plaster and then connected to thin bands of extruded plastic formed into bodies and limbs. The cavernous space of the room in the Arsenale with its cement floors and brick walls intensified the feeling of human frailty expressed in the positioning of the bodies and their facial expressions.
great selection of works and artists - thank you!
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