A Bridge between West and East at OPENASIA 2OO4
By Paolo De Grandis
International Exhibition of Sculpture and Installation
A bridge between West and East. A stage for the meeting of the artistic drives of two worlds, as opposite as Ying and Yang, forever fatally attracted to one another. Venice, a city of a thousand bridges, and historic friend of the Silk Road, trodden by its son, Marco Polo. OPENASIA, an exhibition now in its seventh year, salutes Asia’s spirituality and zeal by bringing its art to the Venice Lido–an ideal, free-trade area where dialogue is open to the rest of the world and where the overlapping of various artistic experiences creates a kind of cultural and intellectual nomadism. The participation of more than 40 artists from 23 countries in OPENASIA bespeaks the West’s rising interest and desire to interact with the ancient empire of the sun, where elective affinities become the terrain for the launch of new artistic experiences which are translated into fresh projects of enormous scope.
The special participation of "Easter Island," ideated by Marco Nereo Rotelli and organized in collaboration with artists Bene Tuki and Luciano Massari, is significant not only as an example of the expressive essence of a primitive strip of land at the centre of the world, where the inlaid rocks – moai – become a universal artistic experience and where poetry and dance are manifestations redolent of a thousand years of tradition, but also because the encounter takes on even greater force within the concept of the exhibition itself. The same goes for "Etruscans in the Orient," organised by Philippe Daverio. Going backwards through history, it posits a twinning between the Orient and ancient Etruria through the works of Giovanni Ragusa, Raffaele Bueno Maria Lola Bueno and Luca Gansser.
Along the Lido promenade the visitor is accompanied by the enigmatic glimmer of Ye Fang’s bronze sails. Li Chen’s Buddha, whose sobriety and definition of matter, whose weightiness occupies silence, rises in its solemnity as a warning to passers-by. The waterfront is further enlivened by Eti Haik-Naor’s cube of boiled rice, the ceramic trunks from the native city of Liu Jianhua, the pseudo-commercial posters scattered by Ye Hongxing and Hu Xiangcheng’s Way. With strong ties to the Orient and the land, Richard Long is a seasoned walker who has covered mile upon mile in almost all the world, from Britain to Argentina, from the Seychelles to Japan, from Mongolia to Zambia. This year in Venice, he is contributing his Blue Sky Circle.
The genius of Max Neuhaus and the irreverent jongleur of paradox Ben Vautier interact with the aristocratic and the popular, the isolated and cultured, passionate and ironic, expert handler of all contradictions – Luigi Ontani. Chen Zhen’s ambivalent red roses, the great glassy sculptures of Carmel Mooney and Hursula Huber, Ricarda Peters’ bi-polar Trash Art Tower, the installation by Luka Stojni� and Giuseppe Dall’Arche, Melita Couta’s Bazaar in Cocoons – these are all unexpected discoveries to be encountered in the walk round OPENASIA. Vittore Frattini and Ludovico De Luigi use the ambiguity of real and spatial relationships to reach a balance between beauty and emotional tension, and Marianne Heske pays tribute to Pierre Restany.
OPENASIA plays host to Alain Arias-Misson’s astonishing Poemobile Angelica, shining with the strength of 3000 light bulbs, Kcho’s Cuban shrubs, Lim Hyoung-jun’s research in sound, translated into matter in the sculpture Sound-Bruit, Nikous Kouroussis’s Rape of Europa, the musical qualities of Emanuele Viscuso in his Twin Towers, the rarefied brass creations of Nyoman Nuarta. Macao is represented by Lucia Cheung, Vietnam by Trinh Tuan and Singapore by Tan Swie Hian, an artist whose international renown has been substantiated by a number of awards.
The tastes and fragrances of Ghana are released by the wood used in the work of Kofi Setordji, Samuel K. Oluo and Joseph Kola Ogunsunlade, and by the objects randomly picked up on the coast, painted and put together by Virginia Ryan to form a gold cascade on the slopes of a tree. The Virgin Islands present painted bronze sculptures by Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh and from Morocco comes the polychrome of precious metal in the work of Fathiya Tahiri.
The event’s emblematic closure is provided by Yoko Ono, participating for the second time, and premiering the Onochord project, her message of universal love.
At a time when economic and trade relations between the Rising Sun and north-east Italy are regaining momentum, heralding forthcoming alliances and future synergies, European art seeks new wellsprings of inspiration and reopens the way for a fruitful dialogue between cultures. These deeply different traditions have much to say and teach to each other, and they do so through Art.
