| Thanks to the intrepidness of its founder and chief curator Paolo De Grandis and his hard-working staff—among them Carlotta Scarpa, De Grandis’ co-curator for the past three editions—Open, the international sculpture and installation exhibition held annually on the Lido Venice, has been growing in size, reputation, and vision, ever since its inception 11 years ago. The fact that Open runs concurrently with the Venice Film Festival, and overlaps with Venice’s art and architectural biennales—a clever move by its director—makes this exhibition something of a celebration. All that hoopla on one small breathtakingly beautiful strip of land is one heady cinematic experience. This year the work of 44 artists from 15 countries decorated the island’s lush walkways, overlooked the beach, and graced the porticos and lobbies of Lido’s two swankiest hotels. Extending its reach beyond the Lido for the first time, Open mounted a separate exhibition independently curated by Gloria Vallese on the island of San Servolo. |
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Edward Rubin
Giacomo Roccon, Now, 2008. Polyester resin, fabric, and iron. Photo credit: Sergio Martucci. Courtesy of the artist.
Thanks to the intrepidness of its founder and chief curator Paolo De
Grandis and his hard-working staff—among them Carlotta Scarpa, De
Grandis’ co-curator for the past three editions—Open, the
international sculpture and installation exhibition held annually on
the Lido Venice, has been growing in size, reputation, and vision, ever
since its inception 11 years ago. The fact that Open runs concurrently with the Venice Film Festival, and overlaps with Venice’s art and architectural biennales—a clever move by its director—makes this exhibition something of a celebration. All that hoopla on one small breathtakingly beautiful strip of land is one heady cinematic experience. This year the work of 44 artists from 15 countries decorated the island’s lush walkways, overlooked the beach, and graced the porticos and lobbies of Lido’s two swankiest hotels. Extending its reach beyond the Lido for the first time, Open mounted a separate exhibition independently curated by Gloria Vallese on the island of San Servolo. Here, under the title On Madness, seven Italian artists from the group CREAM (Creativity and Research in the Arts and Media) examined the many faces that man’s folly can take.The most commanding sculpture in the exhibition, enticingly placed at entrance to the Lido beach, was French artist Christian Balzano’s large fiberglass Golden Bull. Unlike Arturo Di Modica’s ubiquitous charging bronze bull that sits in a park close to Wall Street, Balzano’s bull, lying on its back with its feet in the air and tongue hanging out, just like the world economy, appears to have been knocked for a loop. Several yards away, in a chapel-like space surrounded by five black curtains are Chinese artist Li Hui’s mysterious Buddist Altars. All four altars composed of stacked acrylic slabs held together by long steel rivets are lit from their base by an LED lamp in pinks, blues, and reds. Floating inside of each altar—one altar is shaped like a tank—is a holographic image of the head and hands of Budda, the point being that life, religious and otherwise, often under the threat of violence, is in continual flux. Turning heads at the chic Westin Excelsior Hotel were two super-realistic, near-nude, swimmers by New York sculptor Carole Feuerman. This year, Feuerman, a regular on the world biennale circuit, won “Best in Show” at the Beijing Biennale for her life-like sculpture of a woman in an inner tube.
Open’s foray onto the island of San Servolo—once an asylum for the insane, now home to the Venice International University, as well as a cultural site for numerous exhibitions, festivals, and performances—proved to be a valuable addition to this year’s exhibition. Here, CREAM’s seven artists with a nod to the island’s past history tackled the theme of madness in all its permutations. Best viewed at night, Giuseppe Vigolo chose to flash silhouetted images of war, airplanes, helicopters, and stretcher-bearers, over the façade of the island’s main building. Sleep Out, Christina Treppo’s installation presented eight old and battered metal hospital beds in the garden, each one containing objects such as ashtrays, family photos, and dolls, which sadly gave hint of the lives of former psychiatric patients. Most affecting was Giacomo Roccon’s platoon of nine child soldiers. With heads bowed, and guns strapped to their back, these child warriors, barely into their teens, stand in a field of grass, watching, perhaps incomprehensively, as two soldiers hold what appears to be a bloody burial sheet taken from a fallen comrade. The most otherworldly work was Martin-Emilian Balint’s Anti-lulling field, a square of 1,440 red plastic poppies whose middle section was wired to start mysteriously swaying, as if there was a wind, at the approach of each visitor.
Impossibly hidden, unfortunately in a space in a building that few will find even with the exhibition map supplied, was the work of Barbara Taboni and American sound artist China Blue. Taboni’s installation Lustrale, reminiscent of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, as seen in countless medieval and Renaissance paintings, features two kneeling mannequin legs resting on top a video of rippling water. Playing in the background is a musical tape, electronically manipulated to match the water’s flow.
Housed in a small chamber with two gothic windows, viewers get the feeling that they are in church. Just back from recording the sounds of the Eiffel Tower, China Blue, using underwater recording devices attached to a gondola, in her installation Aqua Alta, tackles sound in a scientific way. The beauty of her recordings is that we clearly hear, in the extreme silence of the island, the sounds of sea life native to the lagoon, waters lapping at the buildings, and the structural creeks of the gondola as it glides across the lagoon. Standing on the portico listening to Blue’s recordings we are reminded that water, the very lifeline of Venice, is the same element that threatens the city’s very existence.
