The Venice Biennale

Letter from the Venice Biennale:
In search of the sounds of silence

LESLEY VALDES

Those sounds of silence they rave about in Venice? You can find them off-hours at the Arsenale, the ancient Naval shipyards and ropeyards where the Biennale is held (through November 21). Ten p.m., say, or midday on Tuesdays are good for the hush. Tuesday is Monday at the Arsenale: on Tuesday, visitors come away baffled: Art in one of the Biennale’s two main spaces is closed to the public. You are directed to the other venue— the Giardini, the public gardens—which are open daily. It’s maybe a half-mile farther, though the walk changes so much it will seem longer. Both sites are spectacular. The Arsenale suggests On the Waterfront— without Brando (or Bernstein’s score). Pebble paths, huge stone and corrugated warehouses, black water lit by stars and moon. Its labyrinth of corridors can terrify an imaginative mind.

If you want to avoid crowds, lunch at the only coffee house across from the Piccolo Teatro Arsenale on a Tuesday when it’s closed; walk from there to the Giardini. Pass a working-class neighborhood, where the laundry stretches over a canal (Venice has 150 canals) and at midday tabacs and trattorias are closed: vast, sunlit quiet. When you can’t see water any more, you’ll wonder if you’re still on this city of 117 islands.

A shabby pocket park with the requisite hero comes into view: Garibaldi Park. Walk through: The scene changes, pronto, to leisure class. You’ve reached the Giardini. Before you go in, you’ll see an international news kiosk, then a restaurant-café where people take their espresso or gelato under the awnings. Cruise ships pass by. The sea is vast, and probably will gleam whenever you go.

An American first

The 52nd Biennale, curated for the first time by an American (Robert Storr), has 76 nations officially represented in the two main venues, Arsenale and Giardini. There are 34 collateral exhibits, many showing in palazzos.

The buildings of the Giardini are mostly 1930s Fascist-style; each pavilion has the name of a nation etched in the stone. I entered Brazil and Belgium, Egypt, Israel, Serbia, Spain, the U.S. and Venice— where an homage to the recently deceased Emilio Vedova was installed, with works by his friend Georg Baselitz. The Italian pavilion is the largest, and includes many American artists among its international mix.

All art is political?

Felix Gonzalez-Torres dominates the U.S.A. pavilion; it’s a moving tribute to the Cuban-born American citizen who died of AIDS in 1996. His themes often key into dispersal and the process of dying. Gonzalez-Torres was a conceptual and minimal artist who believed all art to be political, but the result is subtle not overt. What you see is line, flow, beauty. Untitled, Public Opinion is a large rectangular piece consisting of small grey cellophane-wrapped licorice candies strewn tightly on the floor to suggest a carpet or a grave: gravitas despite the candy core. (As visitors take the licorice, the pieces are replenished.)

I couldn’t find the title for the artist’s tangle of raw light bulbs raining down the central lobby of the Federal-style pavilion. But the minimal chandelier looks regal, lit or unlit, as the excess cords and bulbs splay in circles down to the marble floor.

Directly outside the U.S. pavilion, two pools of white Carerra marble are filled with water: The dual work represents male love. The biennale jury rejected it in 1995.

Imaginary geography meets Seurat

Brazil’s entry tackles the poetics of place. The trio of José Damasceno, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain work on a theme of imaginary geography. Damasceno, born in Rio in 1977, created a towering forest of phone books at the last Biennale. He delights in filling spaces with ordinary objects used in oversize and imaginative ways. Here, immense compasses (the geometric tool) whirl across a gallery as if creating the world. A marble orb rests on the ground, stoppered on two sides by stone corks. Across the room is a pointillistic grey-and-white landscape with tree, Seurat-like: As you stare, it goes in and out of focus.

Sophie Calle is France’s heroine of the moment with her autobiographical art. Florence, Paris, Brussels— the magazines are full of her. Calle has filled the French pavilion with 105 ways of looking at a “Dear John” letter from a former lover. In the Italian pavilion, is Souci, a video of Ms. Calle’s mother, literally on her deathbed. This multi-media piece, more touching than grim, includes a narrative of her mother’s final days. The whys and wherefores are succinct.

In the woods with Pascal and Rousseau

Still, I preferred dread, by Joshua Mosley, in the gallery adjacent. This wry, dark and provocative black-and-white mixed-media animation held my attention though several screenings. Whimsical characters meant to be Blaise Pascal and Jean Jacques Rousseau meet up in real woods, converse with each other and find diverse ways of dealing with a wild dog named dread.

Mosley, who teaches design and animation at Penn, began the project in Philadelphia and completed it in Rome, where he is enjoying the Rome Prize. The exhibit also presents bronze casts of the clay models shown in the film. Mosley composed the score for his film too. The artist, born in 1977 in Chicago, says the film was influenced by his readings of Pascal’s Pensées and Rousseau’s Emile. Pascal experienced a religious conversion. Rousseau believed in God and nature but disliked the church. There is some irony in which philosopher abandons his faith to save his skin— from dread. “The (Rome) fellows are still debating it,” Mosley said.