Venice Biennale Guide

The International Art Exhibition

At the Giardini

At the Arsenale

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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.