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Visual Arts

Photo Slideshow: Dallas Artist Kevin Todora at the Venice Biennale

By Kevin Todora |
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Dallas artist and photographer Kevin Todora recently traveled to the Venice Biennale on a Dallas Museum of Art Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant. He brought back images and a few tales.

On the boat we took from the airport to Venice an older American man and his wife mistakenly tried to get off at the wrong stop. The driver announced “Not San Marco,” and I imagine the older couple only heard “San Marco.” He tried to tell them to stay on the boat and kept them from getting their luggage. In a rage the American man somehow got one of his bags off, and when he came back for his wife and the rest of the luggage the boat left the stop. Some memorable quotes that followed: “If any of my stuff is gone when I get back I’m coming back for yer THROAT!” And, “Calm Down Jim!” I’m not sure what happened with their situation as they bolted at the next stop. Anna, my girlfriend, looked and me and said if any one asks we are Canadian.

If you’ve never been the Venice Biennale it has two main areas, the Giardini and the Arsenal. There are also off-site pavilions and galleries scattered through the city. We stayed a week, which will allow you to see most, but it would be nice to have a few more days. We spent a day at the Giardini and a day at the Aresenal. The rest of the week was spent seeing off-site spaces as well as museums and galleries. We also took a day to see the islands of Burano and Murano.

Where we were staying, Venice kind of felt like Dinsneyland. So many tourists leaving Gelato cups and pre-made Bellini bottles everywhere. If we come again, I think it would be best to stay outside of this area. Everything is pretty walkable, but bring comfortable shoes.

And the food. This trip was just as much about food and wine as it was about art. I won’t go too deep into it or send pictures of our meals, but we had amazing fish risottos, baby squid gazpacho, lamb, and ragu. We trekked to a predominately vegetarian Trattoria and had amazing grilled/roasted veggies and polenta. Wines were plentiful, with Amorone, Cab Franc and Soaves.

Here is a slideshow with images from the biannale, and below there are captions for select shots.

3-5 Angel Vergara from the Belgium pavilion at the Giardini. It was curated by Luc Tuymans. Large screens showed the artist painting over video images. Some of the imagery political some not so much.

8 Nahanial Mellors – This was a sculpture titled Hippy Dialectics. The two heads have a conversation and the way they moved reminded me of “The Rock-afire Explosion”at Showbiz Pizza. There were also two videos sandwich-ing the sculpture that I wish I could have spent more time with. They were like a very British super surreal Harmony Korine film. Very funny

9-10 Cindy Sherman wallpaper

11-16 Norma Jeane – One of the images shows what the room looked like in the beginning. I like the honesty of some of the clay graffiti. In one of the Cindy Sherman images you can see someone wrote with clay “I hate all this crap”

17-19 Seth Price

20-21 Sigmar Polke – This included many of his lens paintings which were seen as his last major body of work.

22 Gabriel Kuri

24-25 Llyn Foulkes

26-28 Christopher Wool

32-34 USA pavilion with work by Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the work after reading reviews before the trip. I did like what I saw except that the tank/treadmill was malfunctioning while we were there. It looked like a couple of interns or attendants were trying to fix it. Didn’t get to see any Olympians strain the heat and humidity. I have video of them trying to fix the tank as well as the ATM machine. I’m a bit hesitant to upload them to youtube because I keep laughing while shooting.

35 – Nordic Pavilion Artist Andreas Eriksson.

36-37 Christian Boltanski at the French Pavilion.

38 Entrance to the Canadian Pavilion. Artist Steven Shearer had a Death-Metal/ Black Metal Approach. I really liked his paintings they were like metal Munch. Unfortunately the entrance was all I photographed. I also took a pic of the poster for his show it’s image 83.

39 Entrance to the German Pavilion.

40 Artist Francisco Bassim inside the Venezuela pavilion.

41 The most disappointing part of the Venice Biennale. The Thomas Hirschhorn was closed most of the time we were in Venice. Someone said it had water damage. I heard it re-opened the day before we left.

42-43 Greek Pavilion – Inside a walkway was placed surrounded by water.

45 Hungary Pavilion Artist Hajnal Németh. “Crash – Passive Interview” This was actually pretty funny. It was a kind of operatic retelling of a car crash taken from interviews.

46 Charles Ray at the Punta Della Dogana museum. This and the Palazzo Grassi were outstanding museums. Can’t take pics inside.

52-53 Narrow House by Erwin Wurm at the off-site Glass Stress exhibition.

54 Beginning of the Arsenale

55 Not a great pic but the Franz West para-pavilion was a recreation of his studio kitchen. it had work by himself as well as other artists.

56-59 Urs Fischer. I especially like the not so shy Italian man exposing his belly while viewing the work. If you can’t tell the sculptures are big candles. There were a couple of firemen that had to stand around while the work melted.

60 Josh Smith

61-62 Adrian Villa Rojas – Mighty Impressive monolithic sculptures. The artist imagined these to be examples of work made by the last civilization of humans.

63-66 – The Italian pavilion at the arsenal was kind of a disaster. There might have been good work but it was overcrowded I just wanted out. The video link might help illustrate this.

67 Katharina Fritsch

73 Karla Black Off site Scottish Pavilion. Real highlight. The work flowed in and our of rooms in what seemed like a big apartment. There were also sculptures carved out of Lush Soaps so the whole place smelled amazing.

78-79 Burano

81 Anna at the Nasher Sculpture Garden at the Peggy Guggenheim.

85 One of many Julian Schnabel Trash cans in the city. He had a great exhibition at the Museo Correr.

86-87 The Galleria dellAccademia

89 Not sure of artist but the death to McDonald’s and risque batman/wonder woman were picture worthy.

94 – not sure if you can see it but there is a Thomas Houseago across the water. It’s making a pretty nice shadow against the Palazzo Grassi.

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