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Venice - Day 1

29 May 2013

Venice Biennale 2013

Day 1. Venice is exactly the same as I left it two years ago.

Venice - Day 1
The Canelleto picture perfect views, romance is fluttering in every where around me.
Venice - Day 1
We abandon this beautiful scenario and enter the incredible world of Venice Biennale and I am enveloped once again by art. Massimiliano Gioni this year’s curator had for all of us created the best year ever. I left the Arsenale feeling total content as Massimiliano had managed to curate an amazing magical breadth of works that smoothly flowed and connected from room to another.It all started with the Encyclopaedic Palace and leads us to so many different scenarios. One being of sculpture with the likes of Hans Josephsohn.
Venice - Day 1
Along the way we bumped into Iwan Wirth.
Venice - Day 1
On our journey even more incredible sculptures in all different scenarios stretched out before us giving us a feeling of foreboding by the artist Pawel Althamer
Venice - Day 1
Then the monstrous Phyllida Barlows nicely placed in their path.
Venice - Day 1
Charles Ray’s lady was also disturbing.
Venice - Day 1
Then just to help us on the way a very strange disembowelled cartoon figure dreamt up by Paul McCarthy. We walk on and on through a maze of grotesque, passed a little bit of surrealism spewed out by Helen Marten and Jeremy Deller, past the Cindy Shermans and the Bellmers.
Venice - Day 1
Until finally there is no hope and we reach the bottom of the human pile. Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have produced our five piece work which resonates a future of doom and gloom for the American Youth of today. We are immersed in such darkness and our senses are brought to a shocking reality when we start to listen carefully to the actual narrative written for these films.
Venice - Day 1
Then there was total peace as the show was complete with Walter De Maria’s sculpture