La Biennale di Venezia

55. Venice Biennial
1 June - 24 November 2013

Title:
The Encyclopedic Palace

Director:
Massimiliano Gioni

Introduction:

On November 16, 1955, self-taught Italian-American artist Marino Auriti filed a design with the U.S. Patent office depicting his Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), an imaginary museum that was meant to house all worldly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human race, from the wheel to the satellite.

Holed up in his garage out in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside, Auriti worked on his brainchild for years, constructing the model of a 136-story building that would stand seven hundred meters tall and take up over sixteen blocks in Washington, D.C.

Auriti’s plan was never carried out, of course, but the dream of universal, all-embracing knowledge crops up throughout the history of art and humanity, as one that eccentrics like Auriti share with many other artists, writers, scientists, and self-proclaimed prophets who have tried—often in vain—to fashion an image of the world that will capture its infinite variety and richness.

These personal cosmologies, with their delusions of omniscience, shed light on the constant challenge of reconciling the self with the universe, the subjective with the collective, the specific with the general, the individual with the culture of her time. Today, as we grapple with a constant flood of information, such attempts to structure knowledge into all-inclusive systems seem even more necessary and even more desperate. The 55th International Art Exhibition explores these flights of the imagination in a show that—like Auriti’s Encyclopedic Palace—combines contemporary artworks with historical artifacts and found objects.

With works spanning over the past century alongside several new commissions, and with over one hundred and fifty artists from more than thirty-seven countries, the exhibition is structured like a temporary museum that initiates an inquiry into the many ways in which images have been used to organize knowledge and shape our experience of the world.

Blurring the line between professional artists and amateurs, outsiders and insiders, the exhibition takes an anthropological approach to the study of images, focusing in particular on the realms of the imaginary and the functions of the imagination. What room is left for internal images—for dreams, hallucinations and visions—in an era besieged by external ones? And what is the point of creating an image of the world when the world itself has become increasingly like an image?

The exhibition opens in the Central Pavilion with a presentation of Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book, an illustrated manuscript that the famous psychologist worked on for over sixteen years. A collection of visions and fantasies, Jung’s Red Book ushers in a meditation on inner images and dreams that runs throughout the show.

The exhibition brings together many examples of artworks and figurative expressions that reveal approaches to visualizing knowledge through representations of abstract concepts and manifestations of supernatural phenomena. In the galleries of the Central Pavilion, intertwined with works by contemporary artists, are the abstract paintings of Hilma af Klint, Augustin Lesage’s symbolic interpretations of the universe, the divinations of Aleister Crowley, and the apocalyptic premonitions of Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern. The ecstatic gift drawings of Shaker communities transcribe divine messages, while the drawings of shamans from the Solomon Islands are peopled by deities and demons that battle sharks and other sea creatures. The depiction of the invisible is a key theme of the show, as evidenced in the cosmographies of both Guo Fengyi and Emma Kunz, in the religious icons and danses macabres of Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, and in the video work by Artur Zmijewski, who filmed a group of blind people painting a world they cannot see.

A similar sense of cosmic awe pervades many of the other works on display, from Melvin Moti’s films to Laurent Montaron’s reflections on nature, all the way to the sublime landscapes of Thierry De Cordier. The tiny ceramic dreamscapes of Ron Nagle, the intricate floral patterns of Anna Zemánková, the mental maps of Geta Bratescu and the painted palimpsests of Varda Caivano describe an inner world where natural forms overlap with imaginary presences. These secret links between microcosm and macrocosm also animate Marisa Merz's hieratic figures and Maria Lassnig’s fleshly ones: both turn self-portraits and bodies into ciphers of the universe.

The exercise of the imagination through writing and drawing is a recurring motif in the exhibition. Christiana Soulou brings to life the imaginary beings catalogued by Jorge Luis Borges, while José Antonio Suárez Londoño translates into images the diaries of Franz Kafka. The rare stones collection of French writer Roger Caillois combines geology with mysticism, while the esoteric blackboard diagrams by pedagogue Rudolf Steiner feverishly relate the idealist dream of grasping and conveying the universe as a whole.

“The Encyclopedic Palace” is a show about obsessions and about the transformative power of the imagination. The alternative worlds dreamed up by artists as diverse as Morton Bartlett, James Castle, Peter Fritz, and Achilles Rizzoli are displayed alongside Shinro Ohtake’s conglomerations of found images and Carl Andre’s visual autobiography. The dynamic tensions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion are the subject of works that explore the role of imagination in prisons (Rossella Biscotti) and in psychiatric hospitals (Eva Kotatkova). Other places of confinement, real or fanciful, are depicted by Walter Pichler, who spent most of his life—which sadly came to an end in 2012—creating habitats for his sculptures, as if they were living creatures from another planet.

In the vast halls of the Arsenale, the exhibition is organized as a progression from natural to artificial forms, following the typical layout of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of curiosities. Just like Auriti’s Palace, these baroque proto-museums brought together man-made and natural wonders to construct visual compendia of the world through a science of elective affinities and magical sympathies. This associative process of knowledge, through its heterogeneous ordering of objects and images, draws interesting parallels between the wunderkammer and today’s culture of hyper-connectivity.

Catalogues, collections, and taxonomies form the basis for many works on view, including J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere’s photos, Uri Aran’s installations, Kan Xuan’s videos, Shinichi Sawada’s bestiaries and Matt Mullican’s labyrinths. Pawel Althamer assembles a collective portrait with a series of eighty sculptures.

In the drawings of Stefan Bertalan, Lin Xue and Patrick Van Caeckenbergh, we find stubborn attempts to decipher the code of nature, while the films of Gusmão and Paiva, and photographs of Christopher Williams, Eliot Porter, and Eduard Spelterini, examine ecosystems and landscapes with an infatuated gaze that longs to capture all the Earth’s spectacles, large and small.

Yüksel Arslan illustrates the encyclopedia plates of an imaginary civilization that resembles a slightly warped version of humanity. The aspiration to create a magnum opus like Auriti's Palace, that can contain and describe everything, flows through Arslan’s drawings as well as Robert Crumb’s visual chronicle of the Book of Genesis, Frédéric Bruly Bouabre’s cosmogonies, and the legends recounted by Papa Ibra Tall. Camille Henrot’s recent video work studies the creation myths of different societies, while the hundred clay sculptures of Fischli and Weiss offer a wry antidote to the romantic excesses of such sweeping visions of human history.

Video works by Neïl Beloufa and Steve McQueen, and paintings by Eugene Von Breunchenhein reflect various approaches to picturing the future, while memory serves as the point of departure for Aurélien Froment, Andra Ursuta, and many other artists in the exhibition.

At the center of the Arsenale, is a curatorial project by Cindy Sherman—a show within the show, made up of over two hundred works by more than thirty artists—which creates an imaginary museum of her own devising. Dolls, puppets, mannequins, and idols cohabit with photos, paintings, sculptures, religious insignia, and drawings by prison inmates, which together compose an anatomical theater in which to contemplate the role of images in the representation and perception of the self.

Bodies and desires are also at the core of Hito Steyerl’s cinematic investigation of the culture of hyper-visibility, and the latest documentary from Sharon Hayes, which presents a remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s study of sexuality, Comizi d’Amore.

Ryan Trecartin’s volatile, post-human bodies introduce the final section of the Arsenale, where works by Yuri Ancarani, Alice Channer, Simon Denny, Wade Guyton, Channa Horwitz, Mark Leckey, Helen Marten, Albert Oehlen, Otto Piene, James Richards, Pamela Rosenkranz, Stan VanDerBeek and others examine the blend of information, spectacle, and knowledge that is so characteristic of the digital era.

As a contrast to the white noise of the information age, an installation by Walter De Maria celebrates the mute, gelid purity of geometry. Like all works by this legendary artist—a pioneering figure in conceptual, minimal and Land Art—this abstract sculpture is the result of complex numerological calculations—a self-contained system in which the endless possibilities of the imagination are reduced to an extreme synthesis.

Among the exhibition’s outdoor installations and performances—which include John Bock, Ragnar Kjartansson, Marco Paolini, Erik van Lieshout, and others, and extend to the very end of the Arsenale, in the Giardino delle Vergini—are works that take on and transform the sixteenth-century Venetian tradition of the Theatres of the World, visual allegories of the cosmos in which actors and temporary architectures were used to construct representations of the universe.

Through these pieces and many other works on view, “The Encyclopedic Palace” emerges as an elaborate but fragile construction, a mental architecture that is as fantastical as it is delirious. After all, the biennale model itself is based on the impossible desire to concentrate the infinite worlds of contemporary art in a single place: a task that now seems as dizzyingly absurd as Auriti’s dream.

Artists:

Hilma af Klint
Born in 1862 in Solna, Sweden
Died in 1944 in Djursholm, Sweden

Victor Alimpiev
Born in 1973 in Moscow, Russia

Ellen Altfest
Born in 1970 in New York, USA

Pawel Althamer
Born in 1967 in Warsaw, Poland

Levi Fisher Ames
Born in 1843 in Sullivan, USA
Died in 1923 in Monroe, USA

Yuri Ancarani
Born in 1972 in Ravenna, Italy

Carl Andre
Born in 1935 in Quincy, USA

Uri Aran
Born in 1977 in Jerusalem, Israel

Yüksel Arslan
Born in 1933 in Istanbul, Turkey

Ed Atkins
Born in 1982 in Oxford, UK

Marino Auriti
Born in 1891 in Guardiagrele, Italy
Died in 1980 in Kennett Square, USA

Enrico Baj
Born in 1924 in Milan, Italy
Died in 2003 in Vergiate, Italy

Miroslaw Balka
Born in 1958 in Warsaw, Poland

Phyllida Barlow
Born in 1944 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Morton Bartlett
Born in 1909 in Chicago, USA
Died in 1992 in Boston, USA

Gianfranco Baruchello
Born in 1924 in Livorno, Italy

Hans Bellmer
Born in 1902 in Katowice, Poland
Died in 1975 in Paris, France

Neïl Beloufa
Born in 1985 in Paris, France

Graphic Works of Southeast Asia and Melanesia, Hugo A. Bernatzik Collection 1932–1937

Stefan Bertalan
Born in 1930 in Racastie, Romania

Rossella Biscotti
Born in 1978 in Molfetta, Italy

Arthur Bispo do Rosário
Born in about 1910 in Japaratuba, Brazil
Died in 1989 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

John Bock
Born in 1965 in Gribbohm, Germany

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré
Born in 1923 in Zéprégüé, Ivory Coast

Geta Bratescu
Born in 1926 in Ploiesti, Romania

KP Brehmer
Born in 1938 in Berlin, Germany
Died in 1997 in Hamburg, Germany

James Lee Byars
Born in 1932 in Detroit, USA
Died in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt

Roger Caillois
Born in 1913 in Reims, France
Died in 1978 in Kremlin-Bicêtre, France

Varda Caivano
Born in 1971 in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Vlassis Caniaris
Born in 1928 in Athens, Greece
Died in 2011 in Athens, Greece

Ames Castle
Born in 1899 in Garden Valley, USA
Died in 1977 in Boise, USA

Alice Channer
Born in 1977 in Oxford, UK

George Condo
Born in 1957 in Concord, USA

Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris
Born in 1875 in Royal Leamington Spa, UK. Died in 1947 in Hastings, UK
Born in 1877 in London, UK. Died in 1962 in Srinagar, India

Oliver Croy and Oliver Elser
Born in 1970 in Kitzbühel, Austria
Born in 1972 in Rüsselsheim, Germany

R. Crumb
Born in 1943 in Philadelphia, USA

Roberto Cuoghi
Born in 1973 in Modena, Italy

Enrico David
Born in 1966 in Ancona, Italy

Tacita Dean
Born in 1965 in Canterbury, UK

John DeAndrea
Born in 1941 in Denver, USA

Thierry De Cordier
Born in 1954 in Ronse, Belgium

Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys
Born in 1965 in Geel, Belgium
Born in 1966 in Wilrijk, Belgium

Walter De Maria
Born in 1935 in Albany, USA

Simon Denny
Born in 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand

Trisha Donnelly
Born in 1974 in Los Angeles, USA

Jimmie Durham
Born in 1940 in Washington, USA

Harun Farocki
Born in 1944 in Nový Jicín, Czech Republic

Peter Fischli & David Weiss
Born in 1952 in Zurich, Switzerland
Born in 1946 in Zurich, Switzerland. Died in 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland

Linda Fregni Nagler
Born in 1976 in Stockholm, Sweden

Aurélien Froment
Born in 1976 in Angers, France

Phyllis Galembo
Born in 1952 in New York, USA

Norbert Ghisoland
Born in 1878 in La Bouverie, Belgium
Died in 1939 in Frameries, Belgium

Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi
Born in 1942 in Merano, Italy
Born in 1942 in Lugo di Romagna, Italy

Domenico Gnoli
Born in 1933 in Rome, Italy
Died in 1970 in New York, USA

Robert Gober
Born in 1954 in Wallingford, USA

Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj
Born in 1967 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Born in 1976 in Copenhagen, Denmark

Guo Fengyi
Born in 1942 in Xi’an, China
Died in 2010 in Xi’an, China

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva
Born in 1979 in Lisbon, Portugal
Born in 1977 in Lisbon, Portugal

Wade Guyton
Born in 1972 in Hammond, USA

Haitian Vodou Flags
Duane Hanson
Born in 1925 in Alexandria, USA
Died in 1996 in Boca Raton, USA

Sharon Hayes
Born in 1970 in Baltimore, USA

Camille Henrot
Born in 1978 in Paris, France

Daniel Hesidence
Born in 1975 in Akron, USA

Roger Hiorns
Born in 1975 in Birmingham, UK

Channa Horwitz
Born in 1932 in Los Angeles, USA

Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Born in 1971 in Chicago, USA

René Iché
Born in 1897 in Sallèles-d'Aude, France
Died in 1954 in Paris, France

Hans Josephsohn
Born in 1920 in Kaliningrad, Russia
Died in 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland

Carl Gustav Jung
Born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland
Died in 1961 in Küsnacht, Switzerland

Kan Xuan
Born in 1972 in Xuancheng, China

Bouchra Khalili
Born in 1975 in Casablanca, Morocco

Ragnar Kjartansson
Born in 1976 in Reykjavík, Iceland

Eva Kotátková
Born in 1982 in Prague, Czech Republic

Evgenij Kozlov (E-E)
Born in 1955 in St. Petersburg, Russia

Emma Kunz
Born in 1892 in Brittnau, Switzerland
Died in 1963 in Waldstatt, Switzerland

Maria Lassnig
Born in 1919 in Kappel am Krappfeld, Austria

Mark Leckey
Born in 1964 in Birkenhead, UK

Augustin Lesage
Born in 1876 in Saint-Pierre-les-Auchel, France
Died in 1954 in Burbure, France

Lin Xue
Born in 1968 in Fujian, China

Herbert List
Born in 1903 in Hamburg, Germany
Died in 1975 in Munich, Germany

Sarah Lucas
Born in 1962 in London, UK

Helen Marten
Born in 1985 in Macclesfield, UK

Paul McCarthy
Born in 1945 in Salt Lake City, USA

Steve McQueen
Born in 1969 in London, UK

Prabhavathi Meppayil
Born in 1965 in Bangalore, India

Marisa Merz
Born in 1931 in Turin, Italy

Pierre Molinier
Born in 1900 in Agen, France
Died in 1976 in Bordeaux, France

Matthew Monahan
Born in 1972 in Eureka, USA

Laurent Montaron
Born in 1972 in Verneuil-sur-Avre, France

Melvin Moti
Born in 1977 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Matt Mullican
Born in 1951 in Santa Monica, USA
Ron Nagle
Born in 1939 in San Francisco, USA

Bruce Nauman
Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, USA

Paulo Nazareth
Born in 1977 in Governador Valadares, Brazil

Albert Oehlen
Born in 1954 in Krefeld, Germany

Shinro Ohtake
Born in 1955 in Tokyo, Japan

J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere
Born in 1930 in Ojomu Emai, Nigeria

Henrik Olesen
Born in 1967 in Esbjerg, Denmark

Damián Ortega
Born in 1967 in Mexico City, Mexico

John Outterbridge
Born in 1933 in Greenville, USA

Paño Drawings

Marco Paolini
Born in 1956 in Belluno, Italy

Diego Perrone
Born in 1970 in Asti, Italy

Walter Pichler
Born in 1936 in Deutschnofen, Italy
Died in 2012 in Burgenland, Austria

Otto Piene
Born in 1928 in Bad Laasphe, Germany

Paloma Polo
Born in 1983 in Madrid, Spain

Eliot Porter
Born in 1901 in Winnetka, USA
Died in 1990 in Santa Fe, USA

Imran Qureshi
Born in 1972 in Hyderabad, Pakistan

Carol Rama
Born in 1918 in Turin, Italy

Charles Ray
Born in 1953 in Chicago, USA

James Richards
Born in 1983 in Cardiff, UK

Achilles G. Rizzoli
Born in 1896 in Marin County, USA
Died in 1981 in San Francisco, USA

Pamela Rosenkranz
Born in 1979 in Sils-Maria, Switzerland

Dieter Roth
Born in 1930 in Hanover, Germany
Died in 1998 in Basel, Switzerland

Viviane Sassen
Born in 1972 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Shinichi Sawada
Born in 1982 in Shiga, Japan

Hans Schärer
Born in 1927 in Bern, Switzerland
Died in 1997 in St. Niklausen, Switzerland

Karl Schenker
Born in Germany
Died in 1951/52, UK

Michael Schmidt
Born in 1945 in Berlin, Germany

Jean-Frédéric Schnyder
Born in 1945 in Basel, Switzerland

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern
Born in 1892 in Jasnoje, Russia
Died in 1982 in Berlin, Germany

Tino Sehgal
Born in 1976 in London, UK

Richard Serra
Born in 1939 in San Francisco, USA

Shaker Gift Drawings

Jim Shaw
Born in 1952 in Midland, USA

Cindy Sherman
Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, USA

Laurie Simmons and Allan McCollum
Born in 1949 in Long Island, USA
Born in 1944 in Los Angeles, USA

Drossos P. Skyllas
Born in 1912 in Kalymnos, Greece
Died in 1973 in Chicago, USA

Harry Smith
Born in 1923 in Portland, USA
Died in 1991 in New York, USA

Xul Solar
Born in 1887 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died in 1963 in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Christiana Soulou
Born in 1961 in Athens, Greece

Eduard Spelterini
Born in 1852 in Bazenheid, Switzerland
Died in 1931 in Zipf, Austria

Rudolf Steiner
Born in 1861 in Donji Kraljevec, Croatia
Died in 1925 in Dornach, Switzerland

Hito Steyerl
Born in 1966 in Munich, Germany

José Antonio Suárez Londoño
Born in 1955 in Medellín, Colombia

Papa Ibra Tall
Born in 1935 in Tivaouane, Senegal

Dorothea Tanning
Born in 1910 in Galesburg, USA
Died in 2012 in New York, USA

Anonymous Tantric Paintings

Ryan Trecartin
Born in 1981 in Webster, USA

Rosemarie Trockel
Born in 1952 in Schwerte, Germany

Andra Ursuta
Born in 1979 in Salonta, Romania

Patrick Van Caeckenbergh
Born in 1960 in Aalst, Belgium

Stan VanDerBeek
Born in 1927 in New York, USA
Died in 1984 in Baltimore, USA

Erik van Lieshout
Born in 1968 in Deurne, The Netherlands

Danh Vo
Born in 1975 in Bà R?a–Vung Tàu Province, Vietnam

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
Born in 1910 in Marinette, USA
Died in 1983 in Milwaukee, USA

Günter Weseler
Born in 1930 in Olsztyn, Poland

Jack Whitten
Born in 1939 in Bessemer, USA

Cathy Wilkes
Born in 1966 in Belfast, UK

Christopher Williams
Born in 1956 in Los Angeles, USA

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Born in 1977 in London, UK

Kohei Yoshiyuki
Born in 1946 in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Sergey Zarva
Born in 1973 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

Anna Zemánková
Born in 1908 in Olomouc, Czech Republic
Died in 1986 in Prague, Czech Republic

Jakub Julian Ziólkowski
Born in 1980 in Zamosc, Poland

Artur Zmijewski
Born in 1966 in Warsaw, Poland