.. 10 | TUESDAY,JUNE 4, 2013 INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE Culture venice biennale Serendipity spices a surprising Biennale VENICE Below decks the main saloon has been transformed into a mysterious, dark-blue sea cave, padded from floor Yo ungest-ever curator to ceiling with crocheted and stitched picks 150 artists, double soft submarine forms, pulsating with fairy lights and gently vibrating with the total of 2 years ago the ship’s engine, evoking visions of the womb and of Jonah in the belly of the BY RODERICK CONWAY MORRIS Whale. The only installation in Venice to Sea levels may be rising and economies match this in size and complexity is shrinking but the expansion of the Jacob Hashimoto’s ‘‘Gas Giant’’ at Venice Biennale goes on regardless. Palazzo Querini Stampalia (through Twenty years ago 53 countries were Sept. 1). He has filled the upper story of represented at the Venice event. This the palazzo with a beautiful, billowing, year there are 88 national pavilions, cloudlike, thread-suspended sequence of around 8,000 translucent pearly, pat- ART REVIEW terned disks and panels through which visitors wander as in a delightful light- with Angola, the Bahamas, Bahrain, filled dream. Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kuwait, the Mal- In the Russian Pavilion at the dives, Paraguay, Tuvalu and the Vati- Giardini, the conceptual artist Vadim can officially appearing for the first Zahkarov re-stages the ancient myth of time. Zeus’s seduction of Danae in the form of Portugal achieved a first by sailing a shower of gold as a comment on the its pavilion all the way from Lisbon and materialism and greed of modern times. parking it outside the Giardini, or Cas- Visitors can observe from a gallery gil- tello Gardens. This seaborne represent- ded coins tumbling from the ceiling ation takes the form of the ‘‘Trafaria above onto the floor below, where they Praia,’’ a decommissioned passenger form an enormous heap. Access to the ferry boat that used to ply the waters of lower floor is restricted to women, who the Tagus, transformed over a period of are handed transparent umbrellas to protect them from the cascading lar- gess, and invited to pick up coins and deposit them in a bucket, which is peri- odically hoisted up and its contents poured onto a conveyor belt to replenish the supply of coins falling from above. Maxim Kantor was the artist chosen to represent Russia at the national pa- vilion in 1997 and returns to Venice with ‘‘Atlantis,’’ an extensive exhibition of recent paintings and graphic works at Palazzo Zenobio (through Sept. 10). At left, a giant rag Here, canvases of Atlantis, disappear- doll with its intern- ing beneath waves, and other apoca- al organs spilling lyptic visions act as metaphors for the out, created by crises of modern Western civilization, Paul McCarthy, is accompanied by Mr. Kantor’s satirical an exhibit at this graphics of historical and contempor- year’s Venice Bien- ary life and politics. The artist, who is nale. Below, a For its first-ever exhibition, the also well-known in Russia and else- nearly eight-foot, Vatican has chosen works of a where as a novelist and cultural com- or 2.4-meter, sculp- group artists representing the mentator, took up residence seven ture of a blond first 11 chapters of Genesis. years ago on an island off the west coast woman in a blue of France. This experience has given suit by Charles rise to new departures in his painting in Ray. The Biennale a year by Joana Vasconcelos and her the form of striking new expressionist is often considered team of 30 painters, seamstresses, car- images of the beaches, dunes and sea- a barometer of the penters, metalworkers and electricians scapes around his new home. state of contem- into an inside-and-out work of art that Watery themes also characterize in- porary art. will take visitors on regular excursions stallations at the Arsenale. An improb- PHOTOGRAPHS BY CASEY KELBAUGH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES around St. Mark’s Basin throughout the able escalator (surely the only one in Biennale. Venice) conveys visitors to the circular, The exterior of the vessel has been en- domed chamber of the United Arab cased from stern to prow in a wrap- Emirates pavilion, where they find around frieze of over 7,000 traditional themselves surrounded on all sides by tin-glazed, blue-and-white, hand-painted Mohammed Kazem’s 360-degree film of ‘‘azulejos’’ tiles depicting 20 kilometers, heaving waves. The idea is ‘‘to experi- or 12 miles, of the Lisbon skyline. It is in- ence what it is to be lost at sea, to walk spired by the ‘‘The Great Panorama of on the waters unafraid,’’ but is also re- Ripples of rumination Lisbon’’ of 1700, which was itself in- markably effective at stimulating sen- spired by panoramic prints of views of sations of seasickness. VENICE Mr. Gioni said he chose ‘‘The Encyc- Venice from the 15th century onward. ART, PAGE 11 lopedic Palace’’ because it best reflects the giant scope of this international Talk turns serious show and what he called ‘‘the impossib- at Biennale after frenzy ility of capturing the sheer enormity of the art world today.’’ of spending at auctions In addition to Mr. Gioni’s Biennale, which includes 158 artists, nearly dou- BY CAROL VOGEL ble the number in the two previous ones, there are pavilions representing They park their hulking yachts with 88 countries. Many occupy spaces in the names like ‘‘Lady Nag Nag,’’ ‘‘Wally’s Giardini, the shaded gardens that have Love’’ and ‘‘Sea Force One’’ on the been home to the Biennale for more choppy waters of the lagoon just out- than a century. Others can be found in side the main entrance to the Venice Bi- the Arsenale, the nearby medieval net- ennale. Every two years, scores of su- work of shipyards, or scattered around perrich collectors arrive here by sea, the city in cloisters, palazzos, medieval joined by museum directors, curators, warehouses and disused churches. artists and auction-house experts. They Among the first-timers is the Vatican, come to see and be seen and to take the whose group show examines the biblic- temperature of contemporary art al story of creation. There are countless today. collateral events too, like an exhibition But amid the glamorous parties and by the artist Rudolf Stingel, who the people-watching —celebrities like covered the Palazzo Grassi with his Elton John and Tilda Swinton were own Persian-inspired carpeting on here, along with Milla Jovovich, who which he hung his abstract and Photo performed in a glass box atop a Byz- Realist paintings. antine-style palazzo —there was also By the time the Biennale ends on serious talk about the contrast between Nov. 24, officials estimate nearly this Biennale and the recent spring auc- 500,000 people will have come to see it. tions in New York, in which Christie’s But it is Mr. Gioni’s show that an- sold nearly a half-billion-dollars’ worth chors the Biennale. In two parts —a of art in just one night. central pavilion in the Giardini and in That frenzied moment of spending the Arsenale —it features self-taught seemed like another world altogether and outsider artists alongside super- compared with this year’s Biennale, stars like Ryan Trecartin, Robert Gober which opened to the public on Saturday and Danh Vo. and is about discovery and looking While there are paintings, drawings closely, not conspicuous consumption. and sculptures dating back 100 years, ‘‘Half the people I’ve seen here seem there are also works made just months to be en route from the art fair in Hong ago. In a circular darkened room at the Kong to Art Basel,’’ said Thomas P. entrance to the pavilion in the Giardini Campbell, director of the Metropolitan are 40 pages of Carl Jung’s ‘‘Red Book,’’ Museum of Art. ‘‘Yet this Biennale is an illuminated manuscript on which he anything but commercial. Massimiliano worked from 1914 to 1930. Off this space has managed to bring together a sur- are galleries displaying an eclectic ar- prising and interesting group of artists ray of artworks including Shaker draw- in an exhibition that is both thought- ings, modern miniatures inspired by provoking and engaging.’’ late-16th-century Mughal drawings by Mr. Campbell was referring to the contemporary Pakistani artist Im- Massimiliano Gioni, the Biennale’s 39- ran Qureshi; abstract canvases by the year-old artistic director, who has Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af chosen ‘‘The Encyclopedic Palace’’ as Klint and meticulously carved wild and the theme of this year’s supersize mythical animals dating from 1870 to As crowds poured into the show for Dickerman, a curator of painting and event. It is taken from a symbol of 1900 by the woodcarver Levi Fisher the three-day invitation-only preview sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art 1950s-era Futurism —an 11-foot, or 3.3- Ames. last week, museum curators could be in New York. meter, architectural model of a 136-sto- In the central gallery there is also an seen taking pictures of the wall labels Tobias Meyer, director of contempor- ry cylindrical skyscraper —that was enigmatic performance piece by the with their smartphones because there ary art at Sotheby’s worldwide, called created by a self-taught Italian-Ameri- British-born artist Tino Sehgal, the win- were so many artists they had never the show a ‘‘game changer.’’ can artist named Marino Auriti and ner of this year’s Golden Lion award for heard of. ‘‘It finally addresses the theory of was intended to house all the knowl- best artist in the Biennale; two or three Everyone had theories about what contemporary art that is based on edge of the world.