Heels to walk away

Walking through the Arsenale corridor to get to the press office, telling each other we will look at the work afterwards, but it's impossible not to give it at least a glance… Quickly realized: a lot of good choices and others that in my opinion were not exactly the best…You get your bag, nice green and magenta bag for press people, and it is only the beginning of a whole bag competition, it's all about bags at the end… but this is another story that will be told later. After a lunch (if you can call that sandwich a decent lunch) and already the first people you run into, we started visiting the Giardini, the private view - that was not very private or at least there were too many people in the private situation. This makes it less exclusive than the way they want it to appear… a lot of high heels that were too high to walk through the Giardini (don't take me wrong I took my heels too but they were the type of heels you can walk in) – a lot of smiles and "hi" echoing around us…


Inside the Italian pavilion after going through the crowd the central room had the most beautiful work by Sigmar Polke, suddenly it makes you hold your breath, huge paintings that danced with the structure, I kept walking around the room thinking how incredible it is when you feel you are able to breath painting, how incredible it is that you can allow yourself to be emotional about a painting and not always intellectual and conceptual, after all guys I'm an artist and those are the things I think and feel in front of a nice work.



I kept on visiting the rooms with no order, I usually go from the left side and keep the line but I didn't this time, in every entrance/exita neon sign EXIL caught my attention with that L at the end but I guess I decided not to think further about it, later in the train back home I learned it was an artwork by Abdel Adbessemed who also had a nice drawing at the Arsenale. Also went through a room were Murray's work was hung, no matter how nicely Storr has explained this choice and her work I still think it was a "non ci sta" choice ("has nothing to do") and is the same I have to say about the first artist you meet when entering the Arsenale, Luca Buvoli.



Beautiful drawn walls by Sol LeWitt who unfortunately died recently. These two drawings remind me of Gordana's piece of the moon drawing, same feeling, very strong work. Iran do Espirito Santo is one of my favourite artists in the list, amazing how he can transform space every one talks about the intervention on space but he really treats spaces purely, but this is another story and it will be told later on since it deserves longer attention. Openings for single pavilions include a speech that unfortunately no one listens to or at least a few people only, there is always a crowd ready to jump into the food/wine table and if you want to get a glass of wine you must get there 30 minutes before the opening and keep your place… this was done by a lot of people, not by us, we met at the Hungarian pavilion that was opening at 15:30 and decided we could have a glass of wine later and we could just go and visit other pavilions. That's when we got into the Australian pavilion, where the yellow bag was given, once you get it you get into the pavilion where we found very interesting work by Daniel von Strumer, very slow movements from a perspective that makes it a beatiful view. Out of it we run into people we have met and we decided to go to the Swiss pavilion where there was real champagne (you always think champagne is what you drink at Biennale's openings but it's not true, only Swiss people had champagne), the work doesn't deserve much of my thought or space in these lines so we enjoyed champagne and the encounter with an Iraqi artist that had a banner… he is also part of that story I will tell you guys later.



First night exhausted, the usual not Incredible food, Venice is nice as to look at it but it is one of the most exhausting cities in the world, every time I've been to a Biennale I've come back with my feet hurting and my mind full of information, I would need at least 2 weeks to settled it in my mind. The other two days were more or less the same, meetings, business cards… etc… I tried my best to see as much as I could, was very glad of some of the works like Christian Capurro magazine project, and the amazing paintings by Russian Dmitry Gutov and obviously our friend Alys was there and had a very nice drawing and video installation. Also loved to see again Oscar Munoz.

The Spanish guys Los Torreznos I thought were amazing , we need more sense of humour in art and enjoy ourselves either by making art or looking at it. This Biennale was very war referential and also reflects more on what's NOT happening in the art world than what's happening because maybe nothing really striking is happening.


And yes I have a lot more in my mind and I could write about it for hours but give me time to settled down information to clean off the air that has been put on top of art by all these heels and openings and money. I have only one thing for sure to say, I enjoyed the opening of theVenice Biennale but I prefer going anonymously maybe in another month and visiting it in calm, I would only want to be in my studio working now, Gordana told me that the best thing we could do after this is create and create but well we are now going to Dokumenta and we will also let you know how it goes, in the meantime these are just first impressions, thrown just like they came into my tired mind.