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Art in America, Sept, 1997 by Marcia E. Vetrocq

Charting the Biennale, and Beyond

The main sections of the Biennale are the more than 40 national entries, most in the pavilions of the Giardini di Castello but some offsite, and Celant's "Future Present Past," which is divided between the Italian pavilion in the Gardens and the Corderie. An additional 16 officially sanctioned satellite exhibitions are on view at sites in Venice and outside the city.

Beyond the shows with official patronage, there is the "unofficial" Biennale, the other modern and contemporary exhibitions concurrently on view. These include a survey of the paintings of Stuart Davis -- the first in Europe -- at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a show of 20th-century Flemish and Dutch art organized for the Palazzo Grassi by Rudi Fuchs and Jan Hoet, and Bonito Oliva's "Minimalia."

Until its closing date of July 13, the Palazzo Grassi exhibition was a limited but interesting complement to the Biennale. The presentation by Fuchs and Hoet relentlessly belabored the point that the art of the Low Countries is rooted in national traditions, and that so-called international modernism is best understood in terms of such local contexts. Despite what came to sound more like curatorial overcompensation than a thesis, the show featured strong works by historical stars like Vincent van Gogh, James Ensor and Piet Mondrian and by the less celebrated Georges Vantongerloo, Victor Servranckx and Jan Schoonhoven. Five of the more recent artists selected -- Luc Tuymans, Jan Fabre, Panamarenko, Jan Dibbets and Thierry de Cordier -- are also in the Biennale. A small but powerful ensemble of works by Rob Birza, Marlene Dumas, Rene Daniels and Tuymans presented in one of the last rooms confirmed the strength of today's Dutch and Belgian painting, abstract and figural.

Pursuing a national theme of his own in "Minimalia: Da Giacomo Balla a ...," Bonito Oliva traces a specifically "Mediterranean" Minimalism back to an analytical practice established during the Renaissance. The survey of 44 Italian artists centers on art since 1960, and explores such practices as repetition, dematerialization, the imposition of a module and the inclusion of text. This is an astute show built of pointed confrontations between works. Bonito Oliva shrewdly exploits the maze of rooms in the Palazzo Querini Dubois to group three or four works at a time in small comparative essays. Seven of the artists -- Marco Bagnoli, Francesco Clemente, Luciano Fabro, Maurizio Mochetti, Luca Pancrazzi, Giulio Paolini and Ettore Spalletti -- also appear in Celant's sections of the Biennale. While the Italian press has been quick to cast the show as a "counter-Biennale," such a truculent characterization doesn't do justice to what may be Bonito Oliva's most considered and disciplined effort to date.

One exhibition which was submitted for official patronage and refused is Robert Morris's Tar Babies of the New World Order. The racially loaded title was probably intended to be provocative, but remains ambiguous and gratuitous. Tar Babies began with a portfolio of drawings of round-cheeked, curly-haired cherubs inspired by the putti of Renaissance art. One figure has been cloned in the form of 15 black polystyrene sculptures. They are suspended from steel roof beams above lopped-off columns arranged in three rows of five. With an arm extended, most of the little guys seem to be plummeting downward, Superman-style. The installation is housed at the remote end of the Arsenale in the dockside headquarters of a marine technology company called Thetis. It is this sublime setting -- filtered breezes, reflected light, the high ceiling of the one-time shipyard structure -- which accounts for whatever scant animation is possessed by Tar Babies. Sometimes with an installation, as with real estate, the three most important things are location, location, location.