Rehearsal - Shanghai Biennale

The eighth Shanghai Biennale was a strange mix of innovative and subtly provocative art, with prosaic, prescribed and uninspiring concoctions. Titled ‘Rehearsal’, the works in the Shanghai Art Museum were Act III in a four-act, one-and-a-half year long project which explores the processes of art creation, production, presentation and dissemination. Within the theme, the suggestion also is that exhibition spaces are not necessarily the final destination for many artworks, but are merely springboards from which artists embark on additional journeys of creativity. While it is an ambitious concept, the result (so far?) can be considered as taking the idea a little too literally, with the inclusion of many works which should never have left the private sanctity of the artist’s studio.

At the core of the ‘Rehearsal’ biennale is the Ho Chi Minh Trail, brought to us by the organisers of the Long March Project, which will sustain the show, along with other separate projects, throughout its four acts. Works from this project are dotted throughout the levels of the Art Museum, but, due to questionable curatorial organisation, were either dwarfed by other works or simply mixed in with unrelated pieces which made them hard to identify, and hence appreciate, as being from the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Particularly on the first floor, where an amalgam of paintings, photographic prints and videos were meshed in with other disparate works, the effect was nothing more than a curatorial mess. This was definitely the part where the ‘rehearsal’ needed a whole lot more tweaking before the final production.

Individually, there were works of impeccable quality and solid concepts. Chinese artist Liu Xiadong’s pair of large-scale paintings depicting the at once hopeless and hopeful aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake are such works. ‘Getting out of Beichuan’ portrays a group of teenage boys in a small boat, seemingly floating directionless, yet peacefully, amidst a flock of white cranes in mid-take off. Adjacent to this is ‘Entering Lake Tai.’ Equally grand in scale, this painting presents a group of young girls poised stoically in the place where their lake once was, against the backdrop of a mountain village in rubbles. Accompanying these pieces are documentary photographs and videos of the artist in the arduous process of painting. This is one example of where the ‘Rehearsal’ theme was perfectly executed.

Of course, not all were as polished or conceptually sound. One ‘installation’ (if you can call hanging up some pieces of paper on a three-walled room an installation, which the organisers of the show did) which prompted a loud “WTF!” and quite a bit of disappointment and resentment from yours truly was Austrian artist Josef Trattner’s wine paintings. Yeah, that’s right, wine. And it was called ‘Blind Taste’. Something was definitely blind in not only the creation, but selection of this work for the biennale. This installation was found in what I came to realise was the Nepotism Corner; a section of the top floor predominated by works which did not appear to fit the theme or any concept of good art, and were probably there through some personal connection with the curators (on the gossip side of the art world, the Shanghai Biennale is apparently notorious for sneaking in friends of those in high places). Trattner’s wine paintings has to be one of them, otherwise the only other explanation for its inclusion in the show is that someone was really drunk (and blind) when the decision was made. While wine can work as a meaningful symbol of civilisation, this was no way to metaphorise it. The works, quite literally a mass of A2 sized paper covered in splotches of either red or white wine and sprinkled with glitter, are supposed to, according to the guidebook, “bring back your deepest memory, arouse the most passionate emotions, and remind you of the mightiness of history.” WTF?!?! By this time, I had major biennale fatigue, having already been through two biennales in five days and I had no patience for such rhetorical fluff and bad art.

Another phenomenon I discovered here was wall text composed in what I can only describe as the strange literary style of socialist rhetoric. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, just an anomaly amongst all other captions I have read. Whether it be a language/translation barrier, or a real indoctrination of socialist expression that has made its way into the biennale world, the texts seemed to speak directly to the reader, and offer strong suggestions on what we should think and feel about the works. The above quote is one example amongst many that caught me off guard and left me feeling like I had just been told how to think, but in the nicest of ways.

So that is the spectrum of the quality of works in this very convoluted show. After over a week of reflection, I’m still not sure of what I think of it. While a biennale should not be judged purely for the way in which it interprets and implements its own theme (as many of these are arbitrary and deliberately broad, chosen in order to include almost anything in the show), I feel as though Shanghai, in particular, did not execute its theme adequately at all. That said, many of the works were beautiful, stunning, thought-provoking, moving and just plain good in their own right, and perhaps that’s what I should take from the experience of the Shanghai Biennale. Simply that it was a show with a real mixture of good and bad art. [Image from http://www.supernice.eu/]

Living in Evolution - Busan Biennale, South Korea

The theme of the Busan Biennale is ‘Living in Evolution’ and it explores both the evolution of humanity as a species, and that of the individual. Set in venues and spaces dotted throughout the sky-scraper port city, the works in this biennale present the dual ideas that, on the one hand, ‘artworks themselves are points where the life of one person – the artist – intersects with the evolution of the human race’, and on the other, artworks are ‘related to life or something beyond the life of any single individual’ (T. Azumaya, Artistic Director).

However, more than being investigations into the dualities of evolution, many of the works in this exhibition are simply fun and enjoyable to view, evoking first and foremost the spectacle nature of art. ‘Earth Baby’ by Japanese artist Tomoko Konoike is one such work. An enormous, sparkly, open-mouthed baby head that rotates in the centre of a large, dark room, this work is supposed to represent the earth floating in space, perhaps before its gradual evolution into the planet we now know. But standing on a platform in the dark room and looking down at this spinning ‘Earth Baby’ made me feel as though I were revolving around its disco-ball head; all I could think was ‘This is really cool!’ And sometimes, while it is important to understand the concept and academic approaches of a work, it is just as important to enjoy it visually and experientially. This work, and others in the exhibition, like the installation of a room full of dolls’ hair, offered just that, and hence a light-hearted, optimistic approach to evolution thus far.

Of course, there were also works which sought to remind us of the horrendous effects of the (d)evolution of humanity. Dinh Q. Le’s much-celebrated ‘Farmers and Helicopters’ video installation is a work which juxtaposes the traumatic memories of the helicopters which were so ubiquitous in inflicting horror on Vietnam War survivors, with the more positive opinions of newer generation Vietnamese farmers who view the helicopter as a convenient tool in their rural lives. The differences in the interviewee’s opinions represent the ongoing conflict and traumatic residues of the War. Another sobering work was Yishay Garbasz’s photographic series documenting the European locations his mother inhabited during her internment in Nazi death camps during WWII. Accompanying these photographs, taken retrospectively in this century, are his mother’s memories of each location, recorded in her own writing, decades after the end of the war. Alongside this work is a documentation of Garbasz’s own physical and psychological transformation from becoming a man to a woman, at the same time as she took the journey of her mother’s imprisonment throughout Europe.

Finally, one of the best artworks I have ever seen is Zadok Ben-David’s ‘Blackfield’ at the Yacht Club, an old, dilapidated warehouse overlooking the dock. The work comprises about 20000 hand-painted, stainless steel plant sculptures, varying in height from 1cm to 22cm, all sprouting out of a large bed of sand. Upon entering the venue, the audience is faced with a mass of black plants, in what resembles a post-apocalyptic scene of ruin and death. However, as you walk along the edges of the sand, and look back on the plants, an overwhelming sense of joy and delight takes over; the darkness slowly transforms into vibrant colours as the other side of the plant sculptures have been intricately painted with the bright hues of a fertile nature. It was a beautiful experience to be able to see plants growing and blossoming before your very eyes. I was absolutely mesmerised by the splendour and beauty of this work, which really encapsulates the experience of discovery that I love so much about viewing and encountering art.

Overall this Biennale was thematically sound and well-executed. The works engaged themselves with the dialogue of evolution and also positioned art centrally in this discourse. More importantly, the Biennale was simply great to look at and experience. [Images from ME]

10000 Lives - Gwangju Biennale, South Korea

The Eighth Gwangju Biennale was the best I have seen so far. Tightly packaged under the title ’10000 Lives’, the Biennale explored the ubiquitous nature of images and our obsessive, iconophilic relationships with them. Included amongst the works by 134 artists are relics, cultural artifacts, newspaper clippings, found photographs, documentation and even spirit drawings which push the boundaries of what constitute art and imagery in a world so dominated by pictures that are ravenously consumed and then often easily discarded.

The Biennale was divided up into seven sections, with each exploring a different facet of image making. Gallery 1 of the Biennale Hall dealt with ‘photographic representation, posing, and the construction of the self through images’ (M. Gioni, Curator). Such processes were presented in numerous ways, from the opening tableaus of on-line communities coming together in the real world, to an uncanny photograph of a 19-year-old Norma Jean Baker (later Marilyn Monroe) with a sheet over her head in an interpretation of death, to Sherrie Levine’s appropriations of Walker Evans’ FSA Documentary photographs alongside the originals, and finally to an intriguing and insightfully humorous video exploring the mechanics of the family portrait from Korean artist Heungsoon Im.

Gallery 2 explored ‘the mechanics of vision through optical illusions and para-scientific imaginaries’ (Gioni) and contained Thomas Bayrle’s psychedelic superforms, Sars drawings from Chinese healer and artist Guo Fengyi, ultra high-speed photographs from electrical engineer Harold Edgerton, and a video of blind people painting murals, amongst numerous others.

The most confronting was Gallery 3, which brought together ‘works that deal with the representation of heroes and martyrs, the way images are used to create myths, preserve memory, or bear witness to war and oppression’ (Gioni). Here, national and global events were explored; such as the Holocaust, the funeral of RFK, pro-democracy rallies in Korea, the war in Afghanistan and prison photographs of inmates at Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge’s school of torture, taken by a 16-year-old ‘photographer in chief.’

Perhaps the most moving, confronting, and conflicting work in the Biennale was the Rent Collection Courtyard, originally made in the 1960s. These 114 life-size bronze sculptures tell the story of the hardship and exploitation endured by a village of peasants at the hand of a corrupt landlord. These peasants then rise up against the landlord and overthrow their oppressor. Walking through this narrative tableaux brought me to tears as I witnessed the back-breaking labour performed by children and their grandparents, saw the expressions of exhausted defeat in their delicately carved-out features, and felt the overwhelming heartbreak of mothers whose children are ripped from their arms. My feelings of compassion and outrage were quickly compromised, however, after I read that this collection was the visual catalyst for Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a regime no less harsh, oppressive and tyrannical than that of village landlords. I still don’t know what to think of this work. On its own, it tells a powerful story of the indignities of such a skewed class system, but viewed in its historical context, the work is then given sinister and malevolent undertones, and I am disinclined to sympathise with its cause.

Gallery 4 looked at ‘religious figures and idols, fetishes and dolls’ (Gioni). This was the weakest of all the exhibits, with two rooms dedicated to a random display of images and sculptures of dolls and doll parts, and another two intricately-constructed rooms dedicated to a museological presentation of 3000 found photographs of teddy bears. Gallery 5 presented ‘idiosyncratic perspectives on the structures of cinema and television’ (Gioni) and had, as its main display, a video of people performing day-to-day tasks suspended upside down. This offered light relief after the journey through the Biennale Hall. The Folk Museum brought together works that ‘address the interaction of images and memory’; and finally the Museum of Art focused on ‘self-portraiture and images as projections of the self’ (Gioni).

It was an epic mission just to sustain oneself physically, psychologically and retinally through this mass bombardment of images. But it was well worth the trek. The meticulous organisation of the show under the subheadings, and the well-guided arrows which led audiences through the exhibition, as through an Ikea show room, made it possible for us to absorb, contemplate and fall in love with (or question) as many works as our mental capacities could handle. Given the enormity of the theme and its almost infinite possibilities, this was a show that could have been drowned out by the power of its own ideas. But it wasn’t. Instead, Gioni has created a stunning curatorial masterpiece which, on the one hand neatly categorises images under easily-digestible sub-headings, but simultaneously continues the discourse surrounding the finesse and nuances of image-making and art-creation. [Image of Rent Collection from http://artradarjournal.com/; image of Teddy Bear Project from http://angelfloresjr.multiply.com/]