Postcard from Venice - pt. 5: Easy Does It

Being in Venice skews your tastes. I find myself being drawn to things I never expected to like and repelled by works I was looking forward to seeing. Coming straight from the airport, I headed right for the British and German pavilions, but I haven’t thought about them since then. At the end of day one amid the national pavilions in the Giardini, I raved about Elmgreen & Dragset’s Nordic and Danish pavilions, but by day two the novelty had already worn off. Yesterday I dutifully walked through the entire Arsenale but didn’t find any relief until entering the garden at the end, where Daniel Birnbaum’s neatly curated ‘Making Words’ unravels into a labyrinthine park whose paths are dotted with sculptures and interventions. Miranda July’s sculptures offering places to pose for pictures beside her hand-written comments might be cheap entertainment, but I was relieved to find a work I could interact with, even on the level of a tourist attraction.

Wandering through the garden I came across Lara Favaretto’s massive and unexpected picturesque swamp in the middle of the park (pictured above), and, on a shaded path behind it, Koo Jeong-A’s subtle, quivering tree stump. I never considered myself a great lover of outdoor sculpture, but then maybe I was just hot, and relieved to finally be outside among some trees and grass after the relentless, darkened chambers of the Arsenale and the blinding brightness of the outdoor thoroughfare beside it. Normally outdoor interventions like these feel tacked-on to the main indoor exhibition, but maybe in this case the artists who installed their works in this peripheral space were freed from the rigid structure of ‘Making Worlds’, and, in turn, that’s why experiencing their works was such a relief.

Likewise, after touring some of the off-site pavilions yesterday afternoon, I found solace in the Icelandic Pavilion (pictured above), an un-renovated building on the edge of the Grand Canal. In front of a set of windows that opened directly onto the water, a young male model wearing nothing but Speedoes sat posing on a disused fountain littered with empty beer bottles. There, Ragnar Kjartansson was painting a portrait of the model – the same model he plans to paint on a daily basis for the entire duration of the Biennale. Admittedly, the whole scenario sounds a little bit forced, and I was skeptical of this hipster atmosphere at first, complete with a turntable on the ground playing a steady rotation of nostalgic Country and Western music. But after watching the scene play out for a few minutes, I started to feel relieved, and, actually, relaxed. It was the first time I’d looked out at the tourists gliding by in gondolas and not wished that I was one of them, but rather felt I was perfectly content to be here, exactly in this spot, not worrying what I should be seeing next or what else I might be missing. Meanwhile, Kjartansson proceeded with his work unhurriedly – rearranging his easel and mixing paints and stopping to chat with his mother, while his model sat on the sofa plucking a guitar and looking sulky.

I know it sounds like a bad music video, but in fact the Icelandic pavilion succeeds in creating an informal atmosphere without being shabby. And, without even realizing it, that’s exactly what I had been waiting for.