All Art Aspires to the Condition of Arne Glimcher
Art dealers are invariably to be found hanging around their artists’ work in the opening Biennale days, and perhaps doing a bit of peddling if the opportunity arises. But one dealer will be on hand for all six months. PaceWildenstein honcho Arne Glimcher, who represents Lucas Samaras, the Greek-born master of the hallucinatory self-portrait, is one of the faces that appear in Samaras’s video piece in the Greek Pavilion, which Pace showed in New York a couple of years ago. (The exhibition is called “Paraxena” and is commissioned by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, but its curator is Matthew Higgs, head honcho at New York alternative space White Columns.) The work resulted from Samaras asking a bunch of art world folks like Artforum Editor Tim Griffin and fellow Pace artist Chuck Close to watch a video of him stripping and prancing around in front of a sort of distorting lens. While some of the viewers, Griffin and Close among them, strive for composure, the good-natured Glimcher laughs through the whole thing. It’s a refreshing pavilion — excellently produced, humorous, the work of a modern master.

From Beast to Beastly (“No night, No day,” No Thanks)
I can’t say I wasn’t warned about “No night No day,” the “abstract opera” commissioned from Welsh visual artist Cerith Wyn Evans and German sound artist Florian Hecker for the Biennale by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, a foundation founded by collector Francesca von Habsburg, who let Evans and his collaborator “absolutely … do whatever [they] want[ed].”

Before heading over to the world premiere at the Teatro Goldoni, I’d run into a pair of journalists who, upon learning I was about to experience one of Hecker’s compositions, expressed concern for my hearing. But who can resist a world premiere, and one with such pomp and circumstance attending it? And no sooner had the art world’s great and good streamed into the Teatro than Sir Norman Rosenthal, director of exhibitions at London’s Royal Academy, sprouted from a stage-side balcony seat and announced in basso profondo that the assembled would soon bear witness to the world premiere of the opera and that he’d known the “incredible talent” (Evans) since the artist was 6.

Such dramatic buildup. But what was this abstract opera? There was a screen, upon which the “players,” a group of amoeba-like shapes, floated about (that would be Evans’s single-channel film projection), accompanied by a series of mostly feedbackish noises in surround sound (that would be Hecker’s impressively produced electro-acoustic sound with computer-controlled spatialization system).

About halfway through the 40-minute event, folks in the upper seats began to discreetly depart. Others dozed, only to be roused by the occasional piercing screech. The man seated next to me yawned, snorted, and blurted out the words “boring, eh?” Judging by the viewers’ slightly pained expressions, and the fingers plunged protectively into ears, more than a few silently commiserated with that critic’s summary judgment.

All of this was, of course, belied by rousing applause when the thing ended. A more extended critique could be heard after the performance from one curator, who wondered aloud why the artists hadn’t created anything more than “a screen saver with Pro Tools.”

Flora vs. Fauna
Roman Ondák has filled the Czech Pavilion with plants left growing there for months. It’s an aggressively “green” offering, but not irritatingly so. It’s a big hit. Everyone seems to like it. It’s more ruminative, really, than it is anything else. Meanwhile, next door at the Australian Pavilion, Shaun Gladwell has a suite of videos, MADDESTMAXIMVS, in which a Mad Max–esque, black-leather-clad dude zooms up on a motorcycle and picks up from a dusty, presumably Outback road a roadkill kangaroo, then paces about for a bit, cradling the carrion in his arms. Call it "Pietà, Beyond Thunderdome." To like Gladwell’s video because you like kangaroos — as well as the idea that a tough-guy type also likes them enough to be sad and hold them when they die — seems wrong. But to like Ondák’s plants because they’re eco-friendly seems acceptable.