The Padiglione Centrale, or Central Pavilion, is the site of the first Biennale Art Exhibition, which took place in 1895
Images courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
This year’s 58th Biennale is May you live in interesting times, curated by New York born Ralph Rugoff, director of London’s prestigious Hayward Gallery since 2006. May you live in interesting times, where interesting means challenging, threatening, was quoted in 1936 by Sir Austen Chamberlain when German troops moved into the Rhineland. Chamberlain said it was a Chinese curse, although it turned out this wasn’t true, not that this damaged its rhetorical effect. Works are distributed between the two main venues, the Arsenale and the Giardini, and for the first time divided into Proposition A at the former and Proposition B at the latter. Both venues show the same artists to encourage dialogue between the two propositions and highlight the multi-faceted nature of and multiple complexities within each artist’s work. Then there are the national pavilions, both at the two main venues while others are distributed throughout the city. I went off to look at the art.
BEAUTIFUL LIGHT