Exhibitions

Venice funny or whimsical (Pipilotti Rist, 2011; four metres tall, guard Christian 25. Double Elvis, Various locations, Martin Creed, 2014). His appointment Marclay’s monumental collage of war by George Condo. 2019. Acrylic, 11th May–24th November as Curator at Venice signalled the films. Playing simultaneously, forty- gesso, metallic chance to create a display less po-faced eight films are arranged in concentric paint and pigment stick on linen. by martha barratt or exclusive than previous iterations, slivers within a single screen, their Installation which would be put together with soundtracks merging in a fuzzy view. (Courtesy Water vapour puffs across the doors of a degree of professionalism in din. Just enough of each is visible to La Biennale di Venezia; the Giardini’s central pavilion, which installation. For visitors from the occasionally see a bit of a face, or to photograph houses one half of Ralph Rugoff’s it also promised the get a sense of the scenery, but the Andrea Avezzù). curated display for the 58th Venice opportunity to see lesser-known or overriding message seems nothing Biennale, May You Live in Interesting emerging British artists in the context more urgent than that most war films Times.1 On entering the building, of the international stage (Rugoff is the favour a palette of muddy beige. visitors are funnelled into Spectra III first curator working in the UK to be Marclay’s film might stand as (2008), a corridor of fluorescent light, selected). His approach to organising a metaphor for this year’s curated from which they emerge, blinking the spaces of the Giardini and Arsenale exhibitions. Despite the bipartite and a little damp, into the exhibition. is novel: he has created two exhibitions, structure – ‘intended to evoke the This sensorial welcome, from Lara or ‘propositions’, each showing works parallel information landscapes that Favaretto – whose mist is titled by the same list of artists. define our increasingly polarised Thinking head (2018) – and Ryoji Ikeda The tone appears to change public discourse’ (p.30) – there is no respectively, is in line with what a dramatically at the Arsenale, where indication of what these two positions visitor might expect from Rugoff’s the other half of the show opens with are (or how they differ), a reflection exhibitions. In his role as Director of an enormous penis. Or perhaps it is perhaps of Rugoff’s decision not to the Hayward Gallery, London, he is a nuclear warhead, grasped between introduce a ‘profound theme’ to the well known for producing exhibitions the legs of a mean clown, who faces displays. On the wall behind Condo’s that are accessible and that privilege another (Fig.25). This grisly entrance clowns, for instance, is a self-portrait experience (Psycho Buildings, 2008), is courtesy of George Condo, whose by the South African artist Zanele interaction (Ernesto Neto, 2010) and the pair of grinning silver jokers, over Muholi, a photograph blown up as

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is a papery death-mask protruding from the side of a car, the whole thing cast in bronze; a terracotta Magdalen figure, whose clasped hands have been severed and presented a little way from her body; a glossy polyhedron like a constructivist gemstone; and a human- height reaper’s scythe attached to the leg of a bright blue plastic chair. Both these artists make their work using bits of things, references and styles piled together from art history, pop culture and the everyday. Style is not tied to authorship but a material to work with. This kind of work sits well within Rugoff’s conceit of showing the same list of artists across two spaces. Eisenman, for instance, has two strong, very different displays: in addition to the pictures in the Giardini, in the Arsenale she shows a collection of large sculptural heads, Paolozzi-esque gargoyles that are macho, but playfully so, and knowingly anachronistic. To understand how the two displays could have been made by the same artist, therefore, requires close attention 26. Morning wallpaper to several metres high. subjectivity, and what might be gained and visual sensitivity. And that is a studio, by Nicole Muholi’s images are an important from looking askance at one?) allows strength of Rugoff’s structure: it gives Eisenman. 2016. Canvas, 167.6 part of her activist work for LGBTQ+ Rugoff to gather works that reflect his the visitor something to hold on to, by 210.8 cm. and Black rights – and therefore a vision of what today’s art looks like to look for, amid the vast halls of very (Courtesy the surprising choice for a curator who artist and Anton without stifling them with overbearing different art. It is also successful for Kern Gallery, writes in his curator’s statement that curatorial frameworks. The question, those artists who are relatively new to New York; exh. ‘art does not exercise its forces in the then, is how this ambivalence might be the international stage, or who make La Biennale di Venezia). domain of politics’. Condo’s paintings productive: when everything is played quieter works rewarded by multiple meanwhile court popular controversy at once, what emerges from the beige? encounters, such as Jesse Darling. In – a ‘banned’ Kanye West album cover, Among the displays, certain a corner of the Arsenale a toilet for his cabbage-patch portraits of the themes inevitably coalesce. There is Queen – to enormous commercial an interest in art history – artists who success. These works occupy reference, play with or subvert it, as opposite ends of art’s relationship to well as with art’s most traditional politics, art history, the market and forms. The first gallery in the Giardini, distribution.2 And so, placed together for instance, is dominated by big in this way, the two works – Pop paintings and sculptures. It is a slick culture versus subculture; macho and and spacious display, which benefits the queer; the institutional and the from Rugoff’s decision to slim down activist – almost drown one another the list of participating artists to just out, each reducing the other to its 79 (from the 120 included in 2017). most banal. Nicole Eisenman’s canvases present Eschewing the political, Rugoff wildly different worlds – a man plays describes art’s function as a social a recorder in a boat lined with teeth, one, arguing in the press release that adrift in a wasted Dalí-esque landscape; For more writing on recent art, presenting different perspectives a couple entwined on a sofa are more visit Burlington Contemporary, compels us to think and ‘make relatable, as they flick their cigarettes our online platform for the connections’, to ‘look askance at all into an empty tuna tin (Fig.26). The latest research and reviews unquestioned categories, concepts and canvases surround sculptures by Jean- on : contemporary.burlington.org.uk subjectivities’. This determinedly vague Luc Moulène, some arranged about approach (what is an unquestioned the floor, a couple on plinths. There

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prolonged exploration into how the physical infrastructure of a city can be used as testimony to otherwise hidden, daily violence.5 The wall also recalls the minimalist – the modular, the (neutral) readymade – and in doing so places the work within an artistic, historic context, implicating art history and its neutralising gaze. Furthermore, in the Giardini, Muro Ciudad Juárez is placed opposite Sun Yuan’s and Peng Yu’s Can’t help myself (2016), a robotic arm that sweeps a constantly spreading circle of a red liquid, mimicking blood, back into the centre. Placed elsewhere, it might be funny, anthropomorphised in its Sisyphean task. Here, however, it rather morbidly recalls Margolles’s work in the 2009 Biennale, in which she washed the floors of the Mexican pavilion with blood collected from the disabled (Darling’s Comfort break; issues over the representation of the 27. Comfort the City morgue, while Fig.27) seems to buckle on a distended other, the question seems to be how break, by Jesse distributing laminated calling cards, Darling. (Courtesy leg, a tenderly anthropomorphised it functions, or not, as a work of art. La Biennale illustrated with gunshot, to visitors object that is bolstered by seeing What does Büchel’s ship contribute di Venezia; of the preview, stamped ‘card to cut Darling’s objects in the Giardini, photograph Italo to thinking about art as a form of Rondinella). cocaine’. By referencing this earlier including an archive box on too-long memorial or critique? Or indeed about work the current display reminds legs, caught in a foal-like skitter.3 the migrant crisis? visitors of the proximity of the Inevitably, the tactic is not always The difficulty of Büchel’s ship international networks of corruption successful, as with Ed Atkins, who can be drawn out by comparison that create Margolles’s victims, and presents a characteristic big-budget, with another work on view, Teresa which, by association, might allow avatar-led theatre in the Arsenale, but Margolles’s Muro Ciudad Juárez (Fig.28), for such gargantuan projects as Yan’s has scattered some acrylics of man- a wall brought brick-by-brick to the and Kee’s robotic arm, or indeed headed spiders about the Giardini. At Giardini from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a Büchel’s big boat. Context is crucially once insubstantial and overbearing, centre of gang violence, against which important to Margolles’s art and is the cartoonish heads recur in most four young people were executed, materially visible within the work. rooms, peeping around corners, probably by the Juárez drugs cartel. It exists within a critical framework, creating a sort of ramblers’ trail of self- Both are material relics of violent expanding notions of what defines referential signage. death, transported from poorer to a memorial or monument and the The spectacle, whether of wealthy countries by internationally complex relationship between art violence or controversy, is another successful artists to display tragedies and politics. By comparison, the uncomfortable thread running of vulnerable people in an art setting. crudeness of Büchel’s gesture is clear: a through the shows. Most fiercely But their merit, as contributions to readymade presented without critical debated is Barca nostra, a rusting boat art and thought, could not be further or historic engagement with its form; from Lampedusa in which around apart. For decades, Margolles has a conceptually flimsy work of art eight hundred people died trying worked with the community in Ciudad that does not justify its cost, either to reach , which Christoph Juárez to combat femicide and drug monetarily or in terms of the exclusion Büchel dragged across the country violence, and she has done so through and exploitation (through a lack of to be beached at the back end of an activist art practice that is informed engagement) of its subjects. the Arsenale, outside the café. The by art’s established role in the city.4 The most traditional art forms, curator’s decision to allow this – and The form of the work, a minutely painting and sculpture, are well the Venetian authorities’ willingness reconstructed readymade (Margolles represented. There are some brilliantly to pay for it – has been criticised by is trained in forensic science), is energetic punkish cat scraps by Jill many, but the work has been defended integral to its meaning. Her exactitude Mulleady in the Arsenale, more by some as an evocative reminder is an indictment of local police – figuration from Henry Taylor and some of colonialism, exploitation and their corruption and failure fully to characteristic swirly canvases from hypocrisy. Putting aside questions of investigate crimes against victims of Julie Mehretu. Sculpture is everywhere, taste, and the well-rehearsed ethical gang violence – and part of the artist’s especially in the abstract curving

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shapes of Liu Wei, Nairy Baghramian 28. Muro Ciudad and perhaps darker in tone or subject- with individual works when they are and Anicka Yi, and in combinations Juárez, by Teresa matter, for the most part it is difficult presented out of context and without Margolles. 2010. of readymade and fabricated objects Concrete blocks. to ascertain what constitutes the two an alternative conceptual framework. by Maria Loboda, Gabriel Rico and Installation ‘propositions’ that govern the split And in mirroring the viewing Nabuqi. The deserving winner of this view (Courtesy conditions of an art fair in this way, La Biennale between the two venues. Big-name or year’s for best artist was di Venezia; newly fashionable artists dominate perhaps it is the most honest exhibition Arthur Jafa, who presented The White photograph both pavilions, the majority depending the Biennale has seen for some time. Album, a film of a CGI, skeletal Iggy Pop Francesco Galli). upon substantial gallery support, 1 The national pavilions at this year’s cut between Youtube videos and tender since the Biennale itself provides Biennale will be discussed in separate shots of a woman working a booth at an so little. Compared with last year’s reviews on Burlington Contemporary, our online platform for contemporary art, art fair, to interrogate racial politics in heavily criticised display by Christine http://burlingtoncontemporary.org.uk/ the and in art. It includes Macel, Rugoff’s is certainly slicker. 2 5,000 copies of Muholi’s self-portraits were printed to accompany exhibitions a rousing confessional video from a The work is well-installed, with plenty across seven countries; a neo-Cubist reformed white supremacist; a chilling of space and excellent labelling. The painting by Condo recently sold for $6.16 million. He has also produced work for luxury sequence of a man illustrating how to catalogue is also superb, with short, products or celebrities, notably painting a conceal a machine gun, an automatic well-written texts that are notable sex scene on Kim Kardashian’s Birkin bag. 3 See M. Barratt: ‘Venice Biennale’, THE handgun and several rounds of ammo among such publications for their BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 157 (2015), pp.652–55; under a pair of jeans and thin T-shirt. clarity. However, Macel put forward and idem: ‘Venice Biennale’ THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 159 (2017), pp.667–68. It is an urgent, masterly sequence that a defined, historical thesis of art’s 4 See S. Howe: ‘Blasting through the city: connects the work and the viewer with function in society, illustrated by much combating feminicide through art in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’, 2017, available at http:// the market on which the film depends little-known or experimental work, havc.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/Howe_2017_ and the climate of fear in which viewer, whereas Rugoff avoids such risks by Dean%27s%20and%20Chancellor%27s%20 Award.pdf, accessed 12th June 2019. film and art market operate. presenting mainly well-known artists 5 See, for example, Margolles’s Although the work shown at the without any overarching narrative. photographic series En torno a la pérdida (Around Loss) (2009–13), Arsenale tends to be bigger, in line with As with the mega-displays at Frieze or which documents abandoned houses the space constraints of the Giardini, Art Basel, it can be difficult to engage in Ciudad Juárez.

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