Highlights From the 56th Venice Art Biennale 2015.

The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Ever since its foundation in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organising international events in the contemporary arts in accordance with a multi-disciplinary model, which characterises its unique nature.

This years 56th edition was curated by Okwui Enwezor, titled ‘All the World’s Futures’, taking place from 9th May at the Giardini, the Arsenale and various other venues throughout Venice. The show officially closes at the end of this week (22 November), so we thought it would now be appropriate to reflect on this year’s event.

Below is a selection of our favourite art installations from the 56th Venice Art Biennale 2015. Yeah, no worries. You can thank us later.

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Photography by Jonty Wilde.

‘Together’ Exhibition by Jaume Plensa // Spanish artist Jaume Plensa presents ‘Together’, a major exhibition of new works that made their debut in San Giorgio. The works embody the artist’s ongoing interest in the human relationship to space, scale and material. Within the vaulted church interior, Plensa joins a sculpture of a hand and head together in conversation – a stainless steel hand formed from characters of eight different languages suspends beneath the cupola in the foreground of the altar; a metallic mesh head sited in the nave towers above passing visitors. Their materiality allows both works to distill and diffuse light passing through the internal spaces, engaging viewers in a spiritual and intellectual discourse.

‘Together’ also includes an installation of meticulous drawings and a group of five alabaster portraits — made using scans of real girls – sited in the Officina dell’arte Spirituale. Occupying a vast, dark space, the statues are lit to reveal their luminous opacity and distinct sense of perspective.

Related Post: Jaume Plensa at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Image courtesy of the artist and A Palazzo Gallery.

‘Out of Bounds’ by Ibrahim Mahama // A long passage behind the Arsenale building is festooned on either towering side with the kind of ropes and rigging used in industrial shipping. One could easily miss the installation, called Out of Bounds, which is why it’s so effective. This hulking, dark and unsettling space is hidden out of sight, echoing the unseen global trade of drugs, guns and human traffic.

Images © Laurent Lecat.

‘Rêvolutions’ Kinetic Forest by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot // Céleste Boursier-Mougenot transformed the French pavilion from a vast, vaulted space to a kinetic forested oasis intended for reflection and retreat. The French artist presents ‘Rêvolutions’ as an experimental ecosystem that reveals the constantly evolving state of nature through sound, light and motion.

Related Posts: Trees in Interiors & Trees in Interiors, Revisited

Images courtesy of Marni.

‘Becoming Marni’ Dynamic Sculptures by Véio // A site-specific installation celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Italian fashion house and the final event of the Marni Prisma program. The exhibit presented one hundred wood carved sculptures crafted by Brazilian artist Véio, who’s work is characterised by his use of natural and found materials– giving them new life as dynamic and colourful pieces. Crafted using timber logs and branches displaced along the river, the historic setting of the abbey compliments the organic forms on display which are unusually shaped like a mix between a person and an animal or bird.

Related Post: Marni Mercado De Paloquemao // MILANTRACE2015.

Photography by Sunhi Mang.

‘The Key in Hand’ by Chiharu Shiota // As visitors to the 2015 Venice Art Biennale entered the Japan Pavilion, a red immersive expanse infills the building’s ceiling and walls, intertwining entrants within a maze of vibrantly coloured yarn. ‘The Key in Hand’ by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota comprised more than 50,000 keys hanging from a cloud of tightly interwoven string. Two rustic boats at the centre of the space part the veil of keys, catching the net of interlaced metal and material as it passes over and permeates the entirety of the site.

Related Post: Stories on Design // String & Thread Installation.

Photography by Alessandra Chemollo.

Untitled Trumpet by Katharina Grosse // Katharina Grosse’s “Untitled Trumpet, 2015” ias a large display of texture and colour, with acrylic on fabric, soil and aluminium debris scattered throughout the installation. Viewers stand in front of a painting, but instead of using a paintbrush, Grosse prefers to shoot colour onto her installations using air compressor and spray gun.

Photography by Marc Asekhame.

‘Our Product’ by Pamela Rosenkranz at Swiss Pavilion // Pamela Rosenkranz filled the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale 2015 with an immersive installation that activates ‘the knowledge mobilised in the technological, scientific and conceptual development of products, subverting the culturally consolidated meanings of art’.  The installation composed of immaterial elements such as light, colour, scent, sound and organic components such as hormones and even bacteria. These are used to guide the viewer through the pavilion, and confront the historically, religiously, and commercially transmitted image of what it means to be human with its biological genesis.

Photography by OCA / Matteo da Fina.

‘Rapture’ by Camille Norment at the Nordic Pavilion // ‘Rapture’ unfolded during the opening days of the international art exhibition as a set of performances by musicians and vocalists at specific times; and a three-part publication which explored the relationship between the human body and sound, through the visual, the sonic and the architectural body. The Oslo-based artist works with the glass Armonica, an 18th-century instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin that creates ethereal music from the touch of fingers on glass and water, and a chorus of 12 female voices. Weaving these elements together within the pavilion itself, Norment creates an immersive, multi-sensory space, which reflects upon the history of sound, contemporary concepts of consonance and dissonance, and the water, glass and light of Venice.

Photography © Didier boy de la tour / clé de peau beauté.

Pavilion of Light Sound by Shigeru Ban for Clé de Peau Beauté // Called ‘Reverberation,’ Pavilion of Light and Sound, installation at Palazzo Pisani dating back to 1603, was designed by Shigeru Ban for cosmetics company Shiseido. The structure was commissioned to occupy a space in the building during the Venice Art Biennale as part of a promotional campaign for the latest collection from Shiseido’s Clé de Peau Beauté range, called Lights of Venice. The main element of the structure is an arc-shaped acrylic roof made up of compact make up cases that swoops up to a height of nine metres, covering the palazzo’s courtyard.

Photography by Cristiano Corte.

‘Scream Daddio’ by Sarah Lucas at the British Pavilion // Sarah Lucas’s works for the British Pavilion reprise and reinvent the themes that have come to define her powerfully irreverent art – gender, death, sex, and the innuendo residing in everyday objects. Throughout this latest group of works, the body – sexual, comedic, majestic – remains a crucial point of return, while Lucas’s work continues to confront big themes with a distinctive wit.

Images © Inexhibit, 2015.

Swatch Faces by Joana Vasconcelos // Among the many events promoted by Swatch, partner of the 56th Art Biennale, a temporary pavilion at the Giardini housed a fascinating installation by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, entitled “Il Giardino dell’Eden” (The Garden of Eden). The installation is composed by posies of artificial flowers, made with textile and optical fibres woven together; the flowers are planted on black cylinders each housing a lighting source, an electric motors and a series of coloured transparent disks that, by turning, change the flower’s appearance.

Related Post: ‘Trafaria Praia’ by Joana Vasconcelos: Floating Portuguese Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2013.

Images courtesy of the artist.

‘In 20 Steps’ Kinetic Installation by Studio Drift // Thin glass bars cleverly crafted to move like wings make up Studio Drift’s latest body of poetic work for the 2015 Venice Art Biennale. Titled ‘In 20 Steps’, the Amsterdam-based artist-designers have channeled the ‘human desire to be able to fly, despite the force of gravity, and the poetry of persistence in the face of adversity,’ into one beautiful form.

Sustainable Identities by Szilárd Cseke at the Hungarian Pavilion // For his Venice Biennale debut, Hungarian artist Szilárd Cseke mapped his home country’s pavilion with a luminous, kinetic network of intersecting PVC foil tubes suspended above viewers’ heads. These translucent channels contain white balls that are pushed through the paths by fans. At times, the balls meet and collide, emulating human migratory patterns and the conflicts they sometimes instigate. A large foil cushion—that inflates and deflates as if breathing—grounds the installation in a stable, organic mass and serves as a balancing counterpoint to the frenetic system of movement above. A sound piece, made in collaboration between Cseke and Ábris Gryllus, complements the installation.

Images © Domenico Stinellis.

‘The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci’ by Kutluğ Ataman // A multi-image work of some of the thousands of people, from all walks of life, whose paths crossed Sakıp Sabancı’s in some way. These are people who were supported by him, those who worked with him, and family members. One of the largest examples of video art, it has approximately 10,000 LCD panels and took three years to complete. The shape of the work is adjustable to the exhibition space in which it is shown.

Photography by Manuel Reinartz.

‘Factory Of The Sun’ by Hito Steyerl at the German Pavilion // Hito Steyerl’s film Factory of the Sun was screened in the large dark ‘basement’ of the reconfigured German Pavilion, a high up mezzanine which led down to three ground-floor chambers, with grids of blue LEDs created a Tron-like environment where viewers could lounge in deck-chairs. Steyerl’s fractious, digitally-buzzing film follows the creation of a spoof video game that discusses, amongst many other things, the shooting down of a Deutsche bank drone that has targeted an innocent bystander.

Photo by Marc Krause. Courtesy of the Artist and LambdaLambdaLambda.

‘Speculating on the Blue’ by Flaka Haliti at the Kosovo Pavilion // ‘Speculating on the Blue’ is a site specific installation conceived by Flaka Haliti for the Kosovo Pavilion. With this work, the artist addresses the types of borders that are not only part of her personal history but also our everyday global reality. Haliti specifically examines the features of the borderland, often deserted and seemingly decaying within a short period of time. Barriers are manmade manifestations of political decisions made about territories, which are often drawn with little regard for natural and ethnical boundaries.

‘Labour Garden’ by Emily Floyd // Australian artist Emily Floyd’s project for All the World’s Futures is an immersive installation set within a walled garden in the Arsenale’s Giardino Delle Vergini. Incorporating a “Fair Use” field library dedicated to critical perspectives on work and generated through the context of the Biennale, ‘Labour Garden’ will be a container for ideas, historical perspectives and newly commissioned writings on the subject of labour.

Photos by Contemporary Art Daily.

All the World’s Futures by Heimo Zobernig at the Austrian Pavilion // Initially perceived as ’empty’ and conceptually the opposite than the many multi-artist pavilions, this work is so subtle it could be missed. Heimo Zobernig raised the floor to be the same level as the entrance and dropped the ceiling, by way of a barely discernable ‘block’ that seems to be floating above. The materials are painted a matte black and only if the visitor was familiar with the original layout of the building, could these changes be perceived.

[Photography credits as noted.]