<<There is also a memento mori element in the close-ups of faces - in sleep or in death, we cannot be sure - in the powerful paintings of Marlene Dumas, who appears in Corral's selection at the Italia pavilion, one of the few figurative artists featured here. Of Afrikaner stock, Dumas was born in the Cape region 50 years ago, but she went to Amsterdam to continue her studies and has been based there since. At first she experimented with collages and pictures using text, but she was inexorably drawn back to painting. Her ideas come from a range of sources, including images in the news and movies, and she cites artistic inspirations as varied as Manet, Millais, Picasso and de Kooning. But she has forged a distinctive, economical and arresting style of her own, achieving striking effects with virtually monochrome colors and decisive brush strokes>>.

<<The Exhibition that will be held in the Italian Pavilion should not be understood as a self-serving discussion on the art of our times, but as a field open to distinct practices within which one can fulfill the desire to exchange experiences, ideas, thoughts, or even to provoke them. I would be pleased if the labyrinthian itinerary of art could be experienced not as a finished story but as a process defined in terms of the relationships between different subjects, forms, ideas and spaces, that would be more "similar to a center for experimentation than a stack of certainties".

In that sense I would like the exhibition to deal with intensity, not categories. I would also be pleased if it were not historical or linear, but demonstrated the relationship that exists between artists of different generations who debate and work on specific ideas about art and the life of our times, creating a nexus between approaches that are similar in intensity and obsessive quality. My idea is for an exhibition that does not simply strive for a concept or a gratifying visualization, but is rich in thought and pleasure. I seek to address the themes that trouble and concern today's society, and that artists know how to express in such a real, poetic and in many cases visionary, manner.

I am interested in ideas that appear as a mass of remains, fragments, rough drafts and attempts; in works that allow the viewer to recreate his own aesthetic experience; in artists that can regenerate our ability to imagine different ways to inhabit the world and to create emotions.

On the contrary, I do not seek an exhibition that, in terms of the numbers of participants from all countries and continents, offers a false model of universality. I have decided to work with certain authors, who have accompanied me along my lengthy artistic itinerary, and to add many other names to this list: young people who will accompany me through a similar experience.

Today's artists do not share a style, but an attempt to build personal aesthetic worlds, to establish their own formal needs, to shape a new reality for themselves, by accepting the challenge to produce an art that makes sense in the new context that has been delineated by the events of the past four years.

In the art of the past ten years it is extremely difficult to detect a dominating artistic doctrine or formal style, in blatant contrast with the constant anxiety about the effects of globalization or multiculturalism. Artists establish the meaning and usefulness of their own raison d'être and the survival of the artistic gesture in a world dominated by the media, in which reality does not appear to manifest itself beyond representation.

By entitling this exhibition The Experience of Art, I wanted to share with the visitors some of the issues that artists address in their works every day:

- nostalgia as the feeling that the past is lost forever, expressed in a metaphorical language;
- the body and its redefinition, the introduction of fragmentation, dissolution and even death;
- power, domination and violence in the everyday life of each individual;
- the socio-political critique of current events by means of irony;
- the use of images, films and narration of the past as an immense archives thanks to which one can produce multiple operations of redefinition and appropriation.

In approaching these issues implicit in the creative act, that do not belong strictly to the field of art, my intention is to show what is common in diversity, so that the viewer may admit the quality of what is unexpected and exceptional, and abandon his own reluctance at the idea of Pleasure in contemporary art.>>

María de Corral
February, 2005

<<María de Corral, renowned art critic and curator and the onetime director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, manages The Experience of Art within the 34 rooms of the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini Della Biennale. This show explores the trends in art, their connections and their evolution, since 1970. De Corral hopes to stir viewers and to create a space ideal for an international exchange of ideas. Her selection of 42 artists manifests the notion that art is not historical, linear or even idiosyncratic; rather, it stems from personal aesthetic worlds and from the “relationship that exists between artists of different generations.” She endeavors to reveal “what is common in diversity, so that the viewer may admit the quality of what is unexpected and exceptional.” Both emerging artists, such as Vasco Araújo of Portugal, and established ones, like Francis Bacon, will contribute to the exhibition. According to de Corral, she chose the show’s title to address the issues reflected on by artists in their works every day. Nostalgia, fragmentation of the body, power-domination-violence in our lives and the sociopolitical critique of current events by means of irony are some of the influences de Corral believes are implicit in the creative act.>>

IL PADIGLIONE GIAPPONESE.

mother's #49 (74.0×108.0cm / gelatin silver print) collection of the artist (2002)

Ishiuchi Miyako fotografa oggetti appartenuti a sua madre. Ma non oggetti qualsiasi: sono indumenti intimi, scarpe, spazzole, tutti accomunati dal loro essere stati a contatto con un corpo ed averne conservate le tracce. I capelli sono rimasti sulla spazzola, gli spiegazzamenti sono ancora presenti sulla (o nella) sottoveste, le scarpe portano su di sé gli ammaccamenti e le abrasioni, tutti segni di una ‘memoria’. 

mother's #52 (150.0×100.0cm / direct print) collection of the artist (2003)

Memoria di un corpo che non c’è più, e questo lo intuiamo guardando altre foto, scattate dalla fotografa giapponese. Immagini che ritraggono, ingrandendole impietosamente, aree di pelle appartenute allo stesso corpo. La pelle è così l’altra faccia di quel contatto rispetto alle cose che ne serbano la memoria. La pelle è la memoria del corpo finché questo vive, le cose lo sono anche dopo. Ma le cose non si fanno plasmare dal corpo in modo ingenuo, esse si situano tra il corpo e le trasformazioni sociali che lo vorrebbero modellare. Ma la pelle porta in sé le tracce inesorabili di un tempo che passa, a dispetto dei desideri che su quel corpo sono stati proiettati.

mother's #53 (74.0×108.0cm / gelatin silver print) collection of the artist (2000)

Dalla presentazione di Michiko Kasahara  di "Mother's 2000-2005 — traces of the future" ( www.jpf.go.jp/venezia-biennale/ )   <<Miyako Ishiuchi’s Mother’s provides a portrait of a woman who was a forerunner of the independent women of today’s Japan. The heroine of this story was a woman born in a rural village in the Northern Kanto region in 1916. She obtained her driver’s license at age 18 and went to Manchuria to work. She was married there, but her husband was quickly drafted and sent to the front. She returned to her hometown in Japan during the war and drove a truck hauling military materials. During that period, she met a young student who had been mobilized and sent to work at a nearby air field. When the war ended, she encouraged him to return to college and after he graduated they began living together in the village. Her husband had been reported dead but returned after the war. She was pregnant at the time, so she paid severance money to her husband and obtained a divorce by mutual agreement. Ishiuchi’s Mother’s series begins with an old photograph of the woman who lived this turbulent life. It shows a large truck, probably of American make, with the door open on the driver’s side. A small young woman wearing a long skirt and blouse, a belt cinched tight around her waist, stands next to it with a dazzling smile. The rest of the works in the exhibition show objects she once owned. These photographs, including “portraits” of chemises and girdles, seem to embody the will of the person who wore them. There are also images of several partially-used tubes of lipstick in different colors, a comb with hair still stuck in it, false teeth and wigs, and close-ups of plants and skin. Ishiuchi carefully selected a variety of “things” left by her mother as a way of quietly observing their relationship, which she reports as discordant, and contemplating a “sadness beyond imagination.” She is performing the task of resuscitating the existence of her mother as a woman. She links her name as an artist with the name of her mother in this series. As Miyako Ishiuchi, an independent contemporary woman, she pays homage to Miyako Ishiuchi, another independent contemporary woman who has continued to live vigorously for 84 years. Her work gives a realistic picture of the great changes that have occurred in the consciousness of contemporary women. Contemporary art reflects contemporary society and looks ahead to the near future, and the photographs of Miyako Ishiuchi, who will represent Japan at the Venice Biennale this year, are refined works of art that deal with the dramatic transformation in women’s attitudes taking place today.>>

IDIOT WIND  (di Novgorod e Myznikova).

Nel padiglione russo. Cosa rende idiota questo vento che ti investe, con intensità crescente, per gradi, via via che percorri il ‘tunnel performativo’? E’ l’elemento ‘performativo’, fittizio appunto. Sono le ‘bocche d’aria’ a vista, da cui essa viene espulsa. E’ il cartello, posto all’ingresso dell’installazione, che ‘invita’ a non sostare per più di due minuti alle prese col vento. Sin dall’inizio, tutto è scontato, anticipato, pre-avvertito, idiota appunto. Anche l’emozione del visitatore che mi precede e che emerge dal tunnel esclamando: <<Che panico!>>: è idiota anch’essa.

<<American curators have selected acclaimed and well-established painter and printmaker Ed Ruscha to represent the United States at the Biennale. Known for his almost stereotypical depiction of American subjects and his use of language, Ruscha’s work asks questions about the aspects of urbanity that society takes for granted. Thus, though he portrays a familiar America, Ruscha also undermines it. “His work has the appeal of a billboard – it seems familiar. His power is in his ability to fuse images and question them,” says Linda Norden, associate curator of contemporary art at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, and curator of Ruscha’s exhibit. An icon to younger artists (Ruscha was born in 1937) because his work always seems fresh and à la mode, and an almost cult figure in Los Angeles where he resides, Ruscha says that his Biennale piece is something he has been “mulling over for a long time.” Though the work will not be unveiled until the event opens, Norden describes it as “responding directly to the Jeffersonian architecture of the pavilion and to Venice itself.” This legendary 20th-century artist will erect the painting-based installation on-site.>>

<< Ricky Swallow has established an exceptional international reputation as one of Australia's most creative young artists. The Biennale is a unique opportunity to showcase a substantial body of Swallow's work and I believe his presence in Venice will be of international significance. His work is poignant, personal and potent.>>

    <<Swallow's art is one of brilliant contradictions: totally contemporary in concept the work remains in the spirit of the great tradition of sculpture. He executes each work meticulously to perfection.>>

Dal sito www.ozarts.com.au  :

<<The exhibition in the Australian Pavilion in 2005 will continue a more personal investigation of themes at the heart of Swallow's art: the passage of time; life, death and immortality; evolution and survival; monuments and memories. Drawing on the still life tradition his tableaux of new and recent sculptures will challenge our perception of reality.

Swallow is celebrated for his scaled-down model-worlds on slowly revolving turntables, and replicas of redundant technologies and pop icons including iMac and Darth Vader. He has worked in cardboard, PVC, plastruct, rubber and resin to craft models, miniatures, replicas, copies, dioramas, homages, mementos, monuments and simulacra. The artist's preoccupation is with the cultural remnants of the recent past, as well as the objects and imagery that shaped his own childhood.

In his more recent work various still life traditions including the vanitas are more overtly present. Swallow has turned to wood, embracing traditional and often long forgotten tools and techniques, to measure by hand, literally come to grips with, the transience of material things.

At 29, Swallow is Australia's youngest Biennale representative. He has established a formidable career since he won the Contempora5 prize in 1999, exhibiting widely in Australia, America, Europe and Japan. In 2004 he exhibited in The Ten Commandments, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, Germany and Living Together is Easy, Art Tower Mito, Mito, Japan and the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. Solo shows include For Those Who Came in Late at the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California (2001) and Tomorrow in Common at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York (2002) and the group show The fourth sex - the extreme territory of adolescence (2003) at Pitti Uomo, Florence. A monograph was published in 2004 by Thames and Hudson.

The Venice Biennale is one of the most strategic ways to promote Australian artists internationally. Thousands of the world's leading curators, collectors, gallery directors and critics attend this biennial event. Established in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the world's most important critical forum for contemporary visual art. It runs from June to November 2005.

The Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body, has managed and funded a long history of Australian representation at the Biennale and owns the Australian Pavilion in Venice. Previous Australian representatives include Bill Henson, Rosalie Gascoigne, Rover Thomas, Sidney Nolan, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Howard Arkley, Lyndal Jones and Patricia Piccinini.

The Australia Council is committed to building opportunities for the international presentation and collection of Australian contemporary art and representation at the Biennale is an important part of this strategy.>>

Nel padiglione scandinavo due bambini 'giocano' a palla. Ma quello che Peter Land 'rappresenta' è un gioco stereotipato tra due manichini: far rotolare meccanicamente la palla lungo una traccia prefissata. Questa è l'unico 'legame' tra i due,  la cui fisionomia è amimica, il cui gesto sembra avere la fissità di un rituale autistico. "Playground" è il 'piano del gioco' attraverso cui il bambino, nel suo sviluppo psicologico, accede al 'simbolico', al superamento della 'datità' delle cose per rivestirle di significati. Per far ciò il bambino deve poter disporre di una capacità di 'illusione creativa' che, come dice Winnicott, è necessaria per giocare. L'installazione di Peter Land sembra quindi fornirci una immagine come in negativo di un tale processo di organizzazione della mente infantile.