Venice Biennale: "every idea but one": the ur-biennial of contemporary art, currently under way in Italy's Most Serene City, is a gargantuan affair whose sheer bulk obscures the few strong works on view. The menu is huge, but there's not much nourishment - Critical Essay

Art in America, Sept, 2003 by Marcia E. Vetrocq

Beneath this Biennale's busyness and expansion is a creeping sense of entropy, a loss of focus with the expenditure of energy. Some of this may be attributable to the "Documenta Effect," the presumption that a visual-arts exhibition alone is intellectually inadequate and feloniously elitist. So the preview schedule was larded with book launches, dance performances, screenings, conferences, even a daily song at the Arsenale led by filmmaker Agnes Varda. And for the rest of the summer and fall, there will be talk talk talk: the Biennale's Archive of Contemporary Culture is sponsoring public meetings with the heads of 34 Italian cultural organizations as well as 99 encounters with writers, scientists and other intellectuals. That second program is titled "99: Every Idea But One."

Putting the Giardini in Their Place

The public gardens in the Castello district have been home to the Biennale since the institution's founding in 1895, but the 2003 edition takes a few swipes at the Giardini, and there are some indications that the Biennale's center of gravity is shifting west, toward the city's center. The on site press office was relocated this year from the Giardini to the Arsenale, a practical move but one that implied the national pavilions were no longer the unassailable starting point of the show. The Amenale also houses the conference room for the five-month program of public meetings. Meanwhile, the comprehensive Biennale organization (which includes dance, theater, music, architecture, film and visual arts) has made a bid to consolidate its offices and extensive archive, currently in several buildings in Venice and Marghera, with a new permanent exhibition space. The proposed site, across from the west end of Piazza San Marco, is the old customs house, once eyed by the Guggenheim as a future satellite in Venice.

For the first time, the award for best national presentation has been given to a pavilion-Luxemburg's--located outside the Giardini. The thoughtful suite of projections, environments and objects installed in the Ca' del Duca by artist Su-Mei Tse is deserving of the honor, but what to make of the jury's implicit rebuke of the Giardini when it primly noted in its brief citation that the award proved you didn't have to be in a large-scale pavilion to win? And then there is the temporary structure in the Giardini (further permanent building there is prohibited) designed by the architectural collaborative Gruppo 12 to house "The Zone," one of the islands in Bonami's archipelago. Curator Gioni contends that "The Zone" is a repudiation of the national pavilions, which preserve a 19th-century idea of the nation-state as an exclusive and fixed entity, even though the building's express purpose is to present a quintet of Italian artists.

Gioni's show, it turns out, is just one expression of the intention, voiced by Bonami to assert a stronger Italian presence at the Biennale. The Golden Lions for lifetime achievement were awarded to Italy's Michelangelo Pistoletto and Carol Rama (American artists received the honor in 1999 and 2001). Works by the four finalists for the second annual Young Italian Art Award, a recognition instituted by the Ministry of Culture, are on view in the Venice pavilion. The award was given to the Iranian-born video animation artist Avish Khebrehzadeh. By contrast, the five artists chosen by Gioni, so eager to redefine the nation-state, were 'all born within the boot.