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Venice Biennale Believes Exists in ‘The Terrible Wakefulness of Cevellón (The Virgin of Mercedari), by Giovanni Serodine

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Venice Biennale Believes Exists in ‘The Terrible Wakefulness of Cevellón (The Virgin of Mercedari), by Giovanni Serodine ER.SEPT.pp.proof.corr.qxp_Layout 1 17/08/2015 15:03 Page 11 EXHIBITIONS eds.: Serodine e brezza caravaggestca sulla ‘Regione dei laghi’ Arsenale, the brutality continues: molten metal (Pinacoteca Züst, Rancate, 2012–13); reviewed in this sculptures made from pickaxes, chains and Magazine, 155 (2013), pp.200–02. knives by the African-American sculptor 2 The painting was last moved in 1987 for the exhibition Melvin Edwards line the walls of the central held at Locarno and Rome. 3 Of the works in the show, only one raises a certain aisle like a medieval torture chamber, submit- doubt, the Christ mocked (no.5), even if the possibility of ting the visitor to a processional march which comparing the head of Christ with the same figure in holds them in sight of a large artillery gun the Coronation of the Virgin would seem to incline in by Pino Pascali at the end of the aisle. In a favour of its autograph status, although the use of line subsidiary room, tar-drenched chainsaws by and light is not entirely characteristic. Monica Bonvicini (Fig.67) hang from the 4 Conflicting documentary sources suggest that he was ceiling like chandeliers, and opposite, the born in Ascona either in 1594 or 1600. bizarre objects in Qiu Zhijie’s fantastical instal- 5 Catalogue: Serodine nel Ticino, edited by Giovanni lation, JingLing chronicle theatre project (2010–15), Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa. 144 pp. incl. 129 col. + b. & w. ills. (Officina Libraria, Milan, 2015), 29.90. ISBN evoke terrible imagined uses. Neither is horror € to be escaped in the brighter spaces of the 978–88–97737–68–1. Giardini 6 New information about Serodine’s relationship with , where the visitor is met with Chris- Rocco Porcari, who worked with Borromini, and with tian Boltanski’s 1969 film L’homme qui tousse, in the painter Alessandro Agazzini, can be found in M. which a masked, ragged body reels backwards Tabarrini: ‘Le maestranze del cantiere di San Carlino’, and forwards in the dark, vomiting blood. in P. Portoghesi, ed.: Storia di San Carlino alle Quattro Such violence, for Enwezor, is an inevitable Fontane, Rome 2001, p.194; and L. Mortari: ‘Gerolamo outcome of staging an exhibition of contem- Siciolante a Palazzo Spada Capodiferro’, Commentari 25 porary art. In his catalogue essay, he asserts that, (1975), p.97, note 24. while artists hold the right to ‘disengagement and detachment’ from the world, an exhibition is principally a public forum that must ‘reflect on the current state of things’; one that he 65. Virgin and Child with Sts Peter Nolasco and Maria de Venice Biennale believes exists in ‘the terrible wakefulness of Cevellón (the Virgin of Mercedari), by Giovanni Serodine. new crises, uncertainty, and a deepening c.1625–27. Canvas, 200 by 131 cm. (Fondazione insecurity across all regions of the world’.1 This Gottfried Keller, Berne, on deposit at the Pinacoteca enormous central exhibition, spread across the Cantonale Giovanni Züst, Rancate; exh. Pinacoteca by MARTHA BARRATT Cantonale Giovanni Züst, Rancate). two sites of the Arsenale and Giardini, includes works by 136 artists from 53 countries, the THE ENTRANCE OF the Arsenale building at majority of which have been newly commis- One exception to the curators’ policy of this year’s 56th Venice Biennale is a dark, sioned. In addition, 89 countries participate exhibiting works from the Canton Ticino decidedly gothic space. Shed-like, dank and with their own pavilions in the Biennale sites as only is a Head of a youth (no.3; Fig.64), which littered with the ‘knife-sculptures’ of Abel well as across the city – which bustles with the passed through the New York salerooms at Abdessemed (Nympheas; 2015), the glow ema- ever-growing number of collateral events and the start of this year, and which the curators nating from Bruce Nauman’s sadomasochistic first-rate museum exhibitions.2 Expanding on convincingly attribute to Serodine. The pur- neon works – ‘STICK IT IN / MY FACE / his influential curating of Documenta (1998– pose of this little canvas is not, however, clear: VIOLENCE / MY CHEST / RUB IT ON’, ‘PAIN / 2002),3 Enwezor calls for a reinvigoration of it is more of a study than a portrait. ANIMAL / PLEASURE’ – is the only source of contemporary art, now in ‘formalist rigor mor- The catalogue,5 which profits from a light. Squinting at knives in the dark, the tis’ (p.18), with critical theory as a means of recent photographic campaign by Roberto visitor is plunged into the vision of Okwui understanding and – crucially – having an Pellegrini, re-establishes the artist’s œuvre Enwezor, the curator of the Biennale, which impact on what is happening around us. which has been muddied over the past two is somewhat euphemistically titled All the Unlike the more defined themes of the decades by some unsustainable attributions. World’s Futures (to 22nd November). Going previous two Biennales (Bice Curiger’s focus Detailed catalogue entries give the history further into the long exhibition spaces of the on the collective in 2011, and Massimiliano and bibliography for each work, with new material for the history of collecting; for example it is interesting that the so-called Virgin of Mercedari (no.4; Fig.65), perhaps datable to after 1625, at the start of the twen- tieth century was in the collection of Juan de la Cruz Lavalle at Cadice, where it was attributed to Zurbarán. Particular attention is paid to reconstructing the web of relation - ships in Rome between the Serodine clan and the community of artists from the Ticino region.6 This exhibition provides the occa- sion to recognise Giovanni Serodine as one of the most intriguing painters of seventeenth- century Europe. 1 Catalogues: A. Crivelli, ed.: Mostra Giovanni Serodine, (Isole di Brissago, Locarno, 1950); R. Chiappini, ed.: Serodine. La pittura oltre Caravaggio (Pinacoteca di Casa Rusca, Locarno, and Musei Capitolini, Rome, 1987); R. Contini and G. Papi, eds.: Giovanni Serodine 1594/1600–1630 e i precendenti romani (Pinacoteca Züst, 66. Production still from They Come To Us Without a Word, by Joan Jonas. 2015. (Courtesy the artist; exh. United Rancate, 1993); L. Damiani Cabrini and R. Contini, States Pavilion, Venice). 652 september 2015 • clvii • the burlington magazine ER.SEPT.pp.proof.corr.qxp_Layout 1 17/08/2015 15:03 Page 12 EXHIBITIONS 67. Latent combustion #1–#5, by Monica Bonvicini. 2015. Chainsaws, black polyurethane, matt finish, steel chains, each around 300 by 130 by 130 cm. (Courtesy the artist; exh. Arsenale, Venice). Gioni’s quasi-anthropological ‘encyclopaedic the ARENA, for example, is a performance by influence of the ‘documentary turn’ in con- palace’ of 2013), this year’s display favours the Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran in which temporary art over the last decade – artists ‘plural’ as espoused by Michel Foucault.4 a woman sings heart-rending slavery-era using the structure of documentary photo - Themes are thus banished and replaced by work songs to a thumping drumbeat and graphy and film, the archive, and the museum three so-called ‘filters’: ‘Liveness: on epic recorded industrial sounds that battle against or ethnographic exhibits – is one of the most duration’, which sees the Biennale itself the singer’s confident ostinato, a form passed visible formal threads running through the unfolding as performance; the ‘Garden of on by and through the collective as a means Biennale.7 Vitrines abound in both the disorder’, interrogating the history of the of proclaiming agency and ownership over Giardini and Arsenale, from Peter Friedhl’s, Giardini as a way to explore the fragmented work. Nearby, photographs by Andreas which are compiled over decades with news- nature of global geopolitics; and ‘Capital’, Gursky (Fig.69) conduct an aestheticisation paper clippings and diaries, to those of the posing the Biennale as a ‘demonstration’ to of labour, framing the patterns of global cap- Cuban artist Ricardo Brey, who fills dozens confront the failures of capitalism and the ital as if they are as determined as patterns in of cases with his other-worldly objects in a changing nature of labour.5 nature, as inevitable and beautiful as the quasi-mus eological display. Taryn Simon’s The first and last of these concerns come underside of a leaf or the ridges of a fingertip. Paperwork, and the will of capital (2015) investi- together in the ARENA, a new performance In addition to the pages from Marx, the gates corrupt international trade agreements: space in the central pavilion designed by catalogue is heavy with documentation. in each display case, the terms of the agreement David Adjaye, the Biennale’s architect. Here, Reproduced are pages from Rousseau’s 1762 are summarised and illustrated with a photo- every day, actors read from Marx’s Das Kapital. Discours; maps and photographs of the Biennale graph of the floral table decoration on which Based on the Sikh principle of the ‘Akhand site from 1928 to 1955; Louis Althusser’s and the agreement was signed – the flowers are then path’ – the continuous relayed recital of the Etienne Balibar’s notes from the 1964–65 identified, pressed, and displayed alongside Guru Granth Sahib – these readings were seminar Lire le Capital; and pages from the the texts. This potpourri of the categorisation conceived by Enwezor and the British artist catalogue of the 1975 Biennale, which was of recent history is as moving as it is absurd, Isaac Julien as a central axis of the exhibition, dedicated to Chile in protest at Pinochet’s as the despicable nature of these financial to campaign for the relevance of Marx’s text regime – an inspiration for the outward- abuses is belied by their pairing with a care- today by encouraging a cover-to-cover looking Enwezor.
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