Boo! Never mind Damien Hirst, this year's Venice Biennale is characterised by a preponderance of skulls and skeletons. They're represented in paintings, sculptures, films and videos, popping out wherever you go. And very welcome they are, too.
Despite the blustering claims of an art world that wishes otherwise, this Biennale - which is supposed to be a great flagship event - is not actually that great. The work is usually very average too and, even when excellent, can be decades out of date. Except for the bones. They're timeless, universal constants, providing some mordant excitement.
In the Arsenale, Lyle Ashton Harris has created banners with repeating skull motifs. Angelo Filomeno's embroidered silk pieces genuinely allow use of the word exquisite: the whole skeletons he depicts are made so finely as to defy reproduction. |
|
 |
 |
 |
This year’s Biennale is a graveyard of talent, says
neal brown
|
|
|
|
Outside the Pinault Collection, overlooking the Grand Canal at the Palazzo Grassi, Subodh Gupta is showing an enormous (and enormously, embarrassingly bad), skull made of stainless steel pots. And Hirst - who is, of course, upping the ante with his diamond-studded model in London - is showing more in Venice, in his New Religion show.
It goes on. Paolo Canevari's agonising Bouncing Skull, shows a youth playing football with one. There are more, by Manuel Vilarino in the Spanish Pavilion; ludicrously decorated ones by Isa Genzken in the German Pavilion; and in the Korean pavilion, skeletons and skulls by Lee Hyung-koo - resembling the bones of Tom and Jerry, engaged in chase (left). Meanwhile, strategically placed among the pieces on show at the Palazzo Fortuny, are bonces both mummified and fleshless.
So go and enjoy. Just don't lose your head. 
FIRST POSTED JUNE 15, 2007 |
