PALAZZO MALIPIERO (San Marco)—Group Mentalities

Rather than letting one artist represent a nation's worth of cultural production, this year several countries have turned over their national pavilions to curated group shows, showing work in a range of media and cultivating a more complicated picture of the cultural topography of a particular place. Among the many countries hosting group shows are Brazil, Bulgaria, Georgia, Lebanon, China, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Singapore, and Syria. Meanwhile Australia is having it both ways, turning its pavilion in the Giardini over to Daniel von Sturmer, but also showing work by Susan Norrie and Callum Morton in two separate palazzos.

Of the group shows, one highlight is the first-ever Albanian exhibition, which is being held at the Palazzo Malipiero. Work by five Albanian artists—Helidon Gjergji, Gent Gjokola, Alban Hajdinaj, Armando Lulaj, and Heldi Pema—has been curated by Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami director Bonnie Clearwater. Though not Albanian herself, Clearwater ended up with the gig after a MOCA NoMi docent, who happened to be the mother of American ambassador to Albania Marcie Reis, introduced the director to her daughter, who then recommended Clearwater to exhibition commissioner and vice director of Albania's National Gallery of Arts Rubens Shima.


PALAZZO SORANZO VAN AXEL (Cannaregio)—Media Presence

With Armenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania all showing artists known for technology-based work, it might seem as if Eastern European is attempting to demonstrate the region’s prowess as a center for media work. But the highlight of the fair’s tech-y art may be Mexico's first official participation in the Biennale, an installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer titled "Some Things Happen More Often Than All of the Time." One of Lozano-Hemmer's "light and shadow" works, the six-part work combines robotics with surveillance equipment, networked machinery, and other elements, and sprawls over a 1,000-square-meter space in the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. Expect a carnivalesque and uniquely disorienting environment.


ATENEO VENETO (Campo San Fantin, San Marco)—Painting Provocations

Elaborate installations have been the fashion at the Biennale for decades, but that doesn't mean that painting is entirely absent this year. Austria is showing work by Herbert Brandl, while Denmark, Macedonia, Moldova, and Uruguay are also represented by painters. Argentina's exhibition of Guillermo Kuitca's work promises to be among the best and most surprising of these shows. Kuitca last represented Argentina in the 1989 Sao Paolo Biennial, but while his work for that show drew on influences such as architecture and cartography, his new Venice paintings are said to be a major departure, referencing "heroic moments" in the history of abstraction. According to curator Ines Katzenstein, the artist set out to create some tension between his work and the Campo San Fantin's Baroque architecture. Kuitca's work also figures prominently in the International Exhibition, so you can assume he will be getting a lot of attention throughout the Biennale.


ISOLA DI SAN SERVOLO—Venice as Exhibition Hall

Although most of the attention is focused on the Giardini, the Arsenale, and the other primary exhibition spaces around Venice, several countries have organized satellite projects throughout the city in addition to their main exhibitions. Yves Netzhammer and Christine Streuli represent Switzerland at its national pavilion, but the country has also invited Urs Fischer and Ugo Rondinone to create work for the Chiesa di San Stae. Meanwhile, Russia, which hosts a group show in its pavilion, has installed a work by Georgy Frangulyan on the water in front of the Isola di San Michele.

The most ambitious off-site project belongs to Tobias Putrih of Slovenia. The artist has long been interested in the uses of architecture—movie theaters in particular—in modernist social projects, and one part of his exhibition "Venetian, Atmospheric" takes place at Galleria A+A in San Marco and shows drawings, models, and maquettes for a proposed cinema. For the second, and more significant portion of the project, Putrih has constructed the cinema on Isola di San Servola, a small, park-covered island about halfway between the Giardini and the Lido. Throughout the Biennale, the theater is screening films by other artists. On view will be works by Chris Marker and Alan Resnais, John Smith, and Rosa Barba, among others.


SANTA CROCE—Globalization

It should hardly come as a surprise that globalization is a major theme at an event that is fundamentally a convergence of art from around the world. But several national pavilions have explicitly worked concerns about globalization into their curatorial premises. Egypt boastfully plays up its historical role as a cultural crossroads with the group show "Egypt...Sources of Civilization...and Junction of Cultures," while the Ukraine questions the need to represent its art scene exclusively with Ukrainian artists by also including work by Juergen Teller, Mark Titchner, and Sam Taylor-Wood. Many individual artists in the Biennale also address issues related to globalization, such as migrating populations, in their work, and Thailand has chosen to tackle them head on with "Globalization...Please Slow Down." The show pairs video work by Amrit Chusuwan, one of the country's best-known artists abroad, with Nipan Oranniwesna, who has shown prints internationally. Both artists address the effects of globalization from a regional perspective.


PALAZZO ZENOBIO (Dorsoduro)—Well-Curated Consortiums

It takes a deft curator to bring together artists working in different media and representing different countries in an exhibition that makes a statement about a region without overshadowing individual works. René Block has assembled seven artists from Finland, Norway, and Sweden, who all explore Scandinavian welfare states, in the Northern European pavilion in the Giardini; while Ulan Djaparov's exhibition of artists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Central Asian pavilion promises to draw attention to the region's cultural output.

But Istituto Italo-Latino Americano curator Irma Arestizabal has had to deal with the largest multi-country exhibition (other than the International Exhibition) at the Biennale. Representing Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru, the exhibition includes artists in their 30s through their 80s, who work in media ranging from film and video to installations to painting. The exhibition is titled "Territorios" and deals with geographies both literal and imagined.