Venice Biennale 2022

Jerry Gogosian’s Report

ENTER THE SCENE

On my first evening in Venice, as I came up for air onto the stunning Rialto bridge, I shook my head as the beauty of a dusky sunset over Venice competed with the ugly behind me. On the top of a golden shopping mall, a European gallery held an event that made me want to find a cave and hide. The installation strewn across golden walls was of video portraits and photographs of sub-Saharan refugees who'd been almost beaten to death trying to escape civil war. The photos were gruesome and commanded respect, but no one seemed to be paying attention to anything beyond the endless canapés, "big gulp" Aperol spritzes, and who was who in the room. I had a hard time knowing where to look. Should I smile and shake hands with this friendly international scene or give my gaze over to the photograph of the man who had a nine-inch scar across his face? A feeling of repulsion overcame me, and I knew the next few days would be filled with these kinds of contradictions. In hindsight, I learned everything I needed to know about the Venice Biennale the first night I arrived.

If the Cannes Film Festival and the Olympics had an art baby, we'd perhaps call her La Biennale di Venezia. And what a beautiful little problem child we have on our hands! This ancient city is the most stunning place I've ever visited, and it felt like a giant theater set for the art world to act out vignettes of virtuosity and inclusion for a very exclusive audience. This is, after all, an excellent opportunity for the art world to congratulate itself once again. On several occasions, I also heard the Venice Biennale referred to as "a 6-month long art fair," which is generally regarded as a faux pax but nevertheless true. Even Artnet published an article, "How to Shop the Venice Biennale."

Dozens of commercial gallerists and their staff could be seen shepherding their artists into the international pavilions or inserting their participation in ancillary ways. Every inch of Venice that can be rented and "activated” is by the art world. You'll find paintings made in 2022 shoved in with antiquities, water taxis bearing the names of blue-chip sponsored artists, drones eerily dancing to choral music inside an ancient cathedral, and pop-ups in storefronts. There were a few head-scratchers too. For example, Katharina Grosse draped a printed metallic fabric over a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes inside a retail store, and that trash (literally) that Sterling Ruby put on the outside of a beautiful Venetian building, calling it "Hex." Way to go, guys! As if the art world weren't rich enough, many installations were sponsored by premium luxury brands. The British Pavillion, for example," was made possible by the generosity of Burberry."

Even being a Venice Virgin, it didn't take long for me to distill the usual suspects of the art world characters into tidy clichés:

• Zoe and Chloe’s busy and nervous, making sure their artists didn't get lost and had everything they could need or want. 

• Social Climbers there for the party & free-flowing Aperol spritzes, and maybe some art.

• Serious Curators with a capital C working on very obscure projects with very little to do with 99.99% of the population. Allegedly, their king Hans Ulrich Obrist was present. (I wonder if he's a fan of vanilla gelato?) I digress.

• Well-fed, government-subsidized European intellectuals who make large-scale bed sheet forts (installations) about their "body in relation to technology." (I envy these artists the most.)  

• Thirsty young American artists who took a break from pumping out hot, wet, figurative paintings to get face time with major players and discuss the market. 

• Mega-Collectors sitting on the boards of major institutions, and generationally wealthy Europeans and grandchildren of American Industrialists. 

There was also another kind of artist here this week…one that feels particular to this zeitgeist…the con artist. You know, the Anna Delveys and the Inigo Phillbricks of the world. Storytelling should be a new category for the Golden Lion, and I personally would love to nominate a few artists in this vein. It would make perfect sense that this "medium" would flourish in an industry that is perpetually forced to real-time self mythologize. Who else will look you square in the eye and tell you that the art world's flavor du jour is "a genius" in a compelling way? Ultra contemporary art needs these people more than ever as the market expands into a shallower territory and the usage of the word art becomes increasingly inane.

There are also mega collectors sightings galore. Their presence can be keenly felt at private dinners by financially tiered table seating assignments. The mega collector will always be prominently placed at the center of the table, next to the artist, and across from the dealer. The further you sit toward the ends of these tables, the net worth of the guests drops considerably. Whenever I'm placed in these situations, I am initially offended but ultimately grateful that I don't have to watch the procession kissing the ring throughout the meal. The scene often reminds me of royals and their eagerly placating court. Anyway, I'd imagine the Venice Biennale provides an excellent opportunity for mega collectors to look after their living cultural investments, aka spending time with the living artists they collect in bulk. After all, if an artist they collect is in the Biennale, their portfolio just went up BIG TIME. 

I also spotted a few art advisors in Venice, but not our sweet @gmail advisors we've become so fond of teasing. No, the other kind that works for the shadow people. The kind at these events with missions we'd have to kill you to tell you. They're easy to spot. They aren't smiling, usually busy on their phone closing a deal, and they don't want to talk to you…unless you're a member of the Saudi family, a Chinese billionaire, an unsanctioned oligarch, or in the Jeff Bezos circle. Best to avoid…

In all international art gatherings, socializing and peacocking come first, and we need to be honest about that. Now is the time you practice your air kisses, ask the same people you always see if they'll be in NYC for the auctions (they will), which hot artists you should be looking at, and whether or not you've pre-booked your Thanksgiving villa in St. Barths yet. You'll also want to ensure that everyone will be in Basel this June for the fair. You see, the art world is like a year-round summer camp for a very privileged group of people in the world, and the annual and biannual schedule is carved into stone. It is astronomically expensive to keep this schedule, though I know plenty who do.

During the Venice Biennale, whatever isn't being overrun by regular tourists is dominated by cocktails, parties, dinners, and even raves hosted by the art world's wealthiest and most generous. The big gets for those who like to see and be seen are the highly sought-after invitations to the mega galleries' after parties like David Zwirner's featuring Chance the Rapper. If you're invited, that means "you're in the club" and considered relevant, and there's nothing anyone fears in the art world more than feeling irrelevant. Some entrepreneurial types have learned to bypass this by creating an over-shared spreadsheet of RSVP emails for different parties, sharing that with their network, who will then take their chances of being embarrassingly turned away at the door. My advice when they say no is to scream, "Lucas will be furious if you don't let me in. Franz West would be turning in his grave!" That'll elicit a reaction one way or the other. I promise.

Harry's Bar is apparently the cheers of the art world in Venice. Can't find your friend? Stick your head in Harry's. Trying to avoid a mistake from an art fair past? They've got a booth at Harry's, waiting for you. It's owned by the same people who own the other place you must make sure to be seen at, The Hotel Cipriani, located on its own private island. Everything about this hotel connotes exclusive luxury, beauty, and comfort. The Murano chandeliers alone are worth more than my college education. I had the privilege of dining there for an afternoon lunch in honor of Marc Quinn's show in Venice curated by my dear friend Aindrea Emelife. It was the best meal I had eaten in Venice (which is not known for its food.) If you're there, get their frozen lemon gelato. NO REGRETS. During the opening week of the Biennale, this hotel caters almost exclusively to the art world and is known for many artist collaborations. This year in one of their gardens, I found a structure made out of pans soldered together containing a group of smiley artists cooking for a charmed audience of art patrons. I think this was some kind of invite-only relational aesthetics project. By the end of day two, I was clamoring to see the main event and see if it lived up to its reputation. 

ENTER THE ART

The Venice Biennale taught me a lot. Namely, the best art installations tend not to cost that much to make, practically all art is now commercial art, and no matter what kind of curatorial bow is wrapped on the Venice Biennale, it's really about money. 

As I trudged to the Giardini through some gnarly rain and gusts of bone-chilling wind, I came upon a pop-up installation by the artist Zhanna Kadyrova put on by Galleria Continua. Here was an artist who'd just escaped the war in Ukraine and lost her home in the wake of the destruction. Her work was a very humble offering of stones that she had washed, sanded, and cut to look like loaves of sliced bread. The sculptures were honest and profoundly moving. She said in her text that when she and her family lost everything during the Russian invasion, she mourned the loss of her 25-year practice as if it had "just been a dream." Her presence proved that with survival comes the inevitable force of art. As stones were the only medium left for her to work with, she alchemized them into bread. She then preciously carried rocks in her suitcase to Venice for us to see both a testament to survival and the human need to create. I felt honored to be in the presence of her stones. Finally, the first powerful gesture at this juncture of my trip, and I was brought to tears. (I still can't talk about it without crying.) It reminded me that truth in art needs no window dressing or curatorial symposium, nor does it require millions in corporate or state funding.

THE MAIN EVENT 

After that, it was on to the Venice Biennale proper. The event is held in two locations, The Giardini and The Arsenale. The Giardini is a giant garden with temples honoring individual nations called Pavillions. The bigger and richer countries have their own Pavillions here, while the smaller or lesser funded countries occupy space in the old Arsenale complex. The central pavilion in the Giardini is where a chosen curator puts on the biggest portion of the show and sets the theme for the nation's Pavillions. This year "Milk of Dreams" was curated by the Italian-born, New York-based Cecilia Alemani.

Let's start with the concept of "Milk of Dreams" as the theme. The exhibition text could have said, "this is a multi-generational and global exhibition of mainly female and gender non-conforming artists whose work runs in the vein of surrealism and fantasy to discuss difficult cross-cultural experiences." Sadly in typical art world fashion, Alemani failed to concisely communicate the themes and parameters for a general global audience. (I suppose this is why lines were still longer to see the ancient cathedrals and not the art of our times.) This MFA art speak used to describe Milk of Dreams came across as alienating, especially for non-art folk. This type of language makes people feel like they can't understand contemporary art when of course, they can…Art is only effective if the viewers are welcomed to think and personally engage. I'm not encouraging that we dumb high concepts, but I encourage the art world to put aside the word salad for a major international event open to the global public. 

The central Pavillion was chaotic and overly filled. It could have lost 1/3rd of the work and packed a more potent punch. There was no clear path for foot traffic, so I would end up in the same rooms more than once. I am not 100% sure that I saw everything. Certain areas of the central Pavilion had the nose of linseed oil from wet, hot paintings. There were paintings by Jade Fadojutimi, Charline Von Heyl, and Jacqueline Humphries, and I couldn't for the life of me fit them in the curatorial framework beyond the fact that they're so desirable in the market, and you see them at EVERY single art fair. It began to occur to me that this was a commercial showcase labeled as a curatorial feat. My suspicions were confirmed after reading Marc Spiegler, the CEO of Art Basel, gushing on Instagram about how much he loves Cecilia Alemani, stating, "we have worked with her twice in the past." I'm convinced a decent portion of this show's artists were cherry-picked in large part by whatever has received the Swiss Art Basel stamp of approval, especially if the artist is represented by David Zwirner. Everything felt art fair friendly. While standing outside the Central Pavillion, a Norwegian guy standing next to me said, "Art and money should fuck, but they shouldn't sleep in the same bed." I thought that was catchy and could smell his statement blowing through the Giardini.

Many of the works contained the following themes: rape, self-objectification, miscarriage, female infanticide, the fight against cultural misogyny, the victimization of women, dehumanization, and death. Many of the works were beautiful to the eye but depressing to think about. Ironically I just went to the Venice Biennale website, and it reads, "The Milk of Dreams aspires to be an optimistic exhibition which celebrates art and its capacity to create alternative cosmologies and new conditions of existence." This is honestly not what I saw. So much of the work was a meditation on loss, and there were few places I felt optimistic. In fact, at a certain point, I stopped reading the individual room texts so that I could pull out my own art literacy glasses and read the work myself. What came forward was a psychological spook show depicting a violent past and a dystopic future. When I think of the original surrealism movement, born out of the horrors of WWI, there is legible pain and confusion, but there is also joie de vivre and a window to marvel at the miracle of survival. Some would even say it was playful. The way that the Alemani layered one nuclear nightmare on top of another cyborg on top of another scene of sexual abuse, it was hard to find the window of light. What I could extrapolate were a lot of artists agonizing over loss, death, abuse, and fear of technological displacement. I did not see the creation of new cosmologies as promised in the curator's text. That being said, standouts in the central Pavilion were paintings by Cecilia Vicuña, sculptures by Gabriel Chaile, the haunting Paula Rego room, Elaine Cameron-Weir's metal caskets, Mrinalini Mukherjee's magical hemp figures, Andra Ursuţa's viscerally evocative sculptures, Katharina Frisch's true to size elephant in the room, and the surrealist work of Maruja Mallo. 

The Pavillions were something entirely different. The contrarian that I am, I was not inspired by the usual top picks. A few Pavilions were fantastic, and I thought most were a waste of money and time. The Golden Jerry (my favorite) goes to the Belgian Pavilion's The Nature of the Game by Francis Alÿs. In his multiple channel video installation, Alÿs depicted children from around the world playing, and I found this to be profoundly inspiring. Play is known by psychologists and anthropologists around the world to be one of the most important keys to the civilizing process. Play has been proven in several instances to be more important than rigid classroom settings and other highly structured learning environments. Rudolph Steiner schools are deeply committed to the art of play, as are cutting-edge schools in Norway where children spend most of their day outside playing. Play is where we learn social rules, patience, empathy, competition, strategic thinking, creativity, etc. It was fascinating to see children from around the world using whatever was available to them to begin creating their systems of belief, not to mention there was tremendous joy in this work. I left this Pavilion smiling. 

Another work that deeply resonated was Saudi Arabia's presentation in the Arsenale. Inside the long, cavernous space rested a 40-meter-long "Teaching Tree" by Muhannad Shono. As you entered the space, you could hear and see the tree breathing deeply as if it were asleep. Press release aside, this work was incredibly poignant as we are all aware of how short our memory for history can be. Given the fact that we were just a few hundred miles from an active war, a few months out from a global pandemic, and all of the turmoil we've collectively faced in the last two years, I was mesmerized by the giant slumbering Teaching Tree that couldn't be bothered to get up and remind us once again the error of our ways. Having had several conversations with curators and artists during my time in Venice, I repeatedly heard, "why is the Venice Biennale acting like the last two years didn't happen?" Shono's poetry in the Teaching Tree left the viewer with the opportunity to contemplate that for themselves. 

Another pavilion that stood out was Korea featuring six works by artist Kim Yun-chul including fluid and chromatic kinetic installations. The eye-catching, standout work was "Chroma V," a kinetic installation of a 50-meter-long parametric structure reminiscent of fish skin. The 382 cells are made of highly transparent laminate polymers that give the work a space age-like metallic sheen. The internal kinetic device causes the microscopic deformation of the polymer layers on their surface, allowing them to change their brightness and color. The kinetic work reads signals that are generated by "Argos – The Swollen Suns." (The Korean Herald). Not only was it aesthetically beautiful, but it evoked a profoundly unsettling feeling as we all understand the impending encroachment of life-like technology taking over the fabric of global society. There is no solution to this global revolution other than monitoring and critiquing it. True to my personal beliefs, I was relieved to read Kim's statement that "Art is the only sphere where we can be free from correct answers or interpretations. We have the freedom to interpret the works in our own way. It is important that the viewers perceive the works with the senses. That is one of the things I pursue (as an artist)." 

As far as the Golden Lion winners, little can be said from my perspective. Simone Leigh's work was perfect due partly to the highest production value possible and the fact that she's making work that feels timeless and important for us to acknowledge now. The work is beautiful, powerful, and long overdue for its iconic status. Her award was the obvious choice. Congratulations, Simone. 

Sonia Boyce's exhibition representing Great Britain, "Feeling Her Way," was viscerally my least favorite Pavilion. Standing in the center of the entrance, all I could hear were the singing voices of women in different keys, which I found to be dissident and hard to appreciate the sentiment behind the work, which was to bring five Black female musicians together by the artist to improvise, interact, and play with their voices. The idea behind the work had merit, but the execution in an ample echoing space was almost unbearable. I spent exactly three minutes in the space before I ran out. 

CONCLUSION 

Art is an invaluable tool for understanding the past, the present, and glimpse into the future. My experience in Venice was not necessarily a pleasant one. The issues of our times were glaring at me no matter which way I looked, and I don't think that was always intentional. Nothing about this trip made me feel celebratory. There was a lot of unnecessary excess and strange politics at play that went over my head. I came back from Venice and realized that I couldn't write about this in my usual humorous "Jerry tone." We are living in an extremely complicated time that deserves serious consideration. (For those missing the laughs, there will be other humorous reports.) For something like the Venice Biennale to be truly effective, it's got to knock off the exclusive act and open the experience up to everyone. Simple adjustments could be made to achieve this, but I'm just Jerry Gogosian, so I'll leave out my suggestions for now. The naval gazing that I found in most of the Pavillions felt like a missed opportunity to say something profound in such an important moment. I honestly wish nothing more than for art to be an effective tool to help people find understanding, compassion, and forgiveness as we share this planet. Perhaps some will find that through their experience at the Venice Biennale, though I found minimal opportunities for it myself. I still remain optimistic because I look at enough art to know what else is out there. 

Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts if you made it this far. 

Yours Truly,

Jerry Gogosian