sculpture October 2017Vol. 36 No. 8

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ctober 2017 Vol. 36 No.8

A publication of the International Sculpture Center

Sculpture October 2017 69

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Medardo RossoPulitzer Arts Foundation

Though Medardo Rosso (1858–1928)is not as widely known today as heshould be, a number of his contem-poraries (including the influentialFrench poet Guillaume Apollinaire)considered him to be as great asculptor as Rodin. “Medardo Rosso:Experiments in Light and Form”addressed this omission with a visu-ally arresting and extremely informa-tive presentation of his works from1882 to 1906, curated by SharonHecker, a leading Rosso scholar, andTamara H. Schenkenberg, an associate curator at the Pulitzer ArtsFoundation.

The exhibition, the most compre-hensive museum survey of Rosso’swork in the U.S. to date, featuredapproximately 100 sculptures, draw-ings, and photographs, many onview for the first time. The small,mostly undated drawings arebelieved to be independent works,not studies, and the intriguing,innovative photographs—with alter-ations and additions—demonstratehis keen interest in light phenomena,new mediums, and new technicalresolutions. The pairing of art andarchitecture here was unusuallyfelicitous, with the works meticu-lously installed in collaboration withthe natural light that plays through-out the Tadao Ando-designedmuseum.

Rosso’s sculptures are primarilyexecuted in wax and plaster, theirsurfaces and forms expressionisticand startlingly responsive to light.While his preference for these mate-rials might have begun as a neces-

sity, they soon became integratedinto his aesthetic, as he sought toredefine the language of sculpture.Even his bronzes are animated, thelight playing restlessly across theiragitated surfaces.

He was deeply preoccupied withthe dematerialization of form as anextension of the fleeting effects oflight and shadow, spurred by the opti-cal experiments of the Impressionistsand Post-Impressionists and by the

avant-garde discourse of his time.Rosso’s vision is less sweeping, lessinclined toward grandeur thanRodin’s, his works seldom higher thantwo feet; one exception, at threefeet, is his sensitive bronze portraitof Henri Rouart (late 1889–90), apatron of the arts. The two artistswere friends and had exchangedworks, but there was a falling outbecause Rosso felt that Rodin hadappropriated a number of his ideas

without acknowledgment. The stanceof Rosso’s The Bookmaker (1893–95),for instance, with the figure tiltedto the side and drawn up and back,strongly resembles the final poseadopted by Rodin for his celebratedMonument to Balzac, completed in 1897 and often acclaimed as thefirst modern sculpture.

Rosso’s production was not prodi-gious, encompassing only about 40distinct subjects over the course of

reviews

Medardo Rosso, Ecce puer (Behold

the Child), 1906. Bronze with plaster

investment, 43.8 x 36 x 33 cm.

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his creative life, replicated in a rangeof materials. His last original work,Ecce puer (Behold the Child) (1906), is a haunting portrayal; the softlyblurred visage pictures a state ofpotential, a coming into being thattypifies most of his works. He often

leaves traces of the process visible—and did so early on. These tracesinclude the investment left over fromcastings and mistakes made in pro-duction, elements that valorize bothprocess and the irregularities thatother artists smoothed away. After

Ecce puer, Rosso recast work from hisrepertoire for the next two decadesuntil his death in Milan at the age of70 (he had returned to Italy, follow-ing the end of World War I, after 30years in Paris).

Rosso’s sensibility is poetic andpensive; his version of Baudelaire’sheroism of modern life is rooted in ordinary people and the ordinarycircumstances of their lives. Thesense of vulnerability that he con-jures in his work suits his personae,most often women, children, theelderly, and the socially marginalized

(a concierge, a prostitute, a streeturchin), progressing from the realisticto the almost purely abstract (suchworks almost seem like precursors to Brancusi). For these reasons and more, Rosso was attuned to thefuture as he presciently, intuitively,and rebelliously embraced subjectiv-ity, interiority, and the emotional and psychological—points of viewcompatible with our own.

Some of the works are beauties.Among the loveliest is Madame X(1896), a head in glowing honey-colored wax, the features barely discernible, as if veiled in light.Another standout is Aetas aurea(Golden Age) from late 1885–86, a mother-and-child motif that Rossohad depicted in several versions;the one in yellow wax is particularlycaptivating, the mother caressing the child’s chubby cheek with oneextended finger as if to soothe it

Left: Medardo Rosso, Carne altrui

(Flesh of Others), 1883–84. Wax with

plaster interior, 33 x 37 x 30 cm. Below

left: Medardo Rosso, Madame Noblet,

c.1897–98. Plaster, 64.5 x 52.5 x

45.5 cm. Below right: Medardo Rosso,

Enfant au sein (Child at the Breast),

1889–90. Bronze, 50 x 45 x 20 cm.

Sculpture October 2017 71

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or simply to touch its silken skin.Other works may be harder toadmire at first glance, including thebronze edition of Enfant au sein(Child at the breast) from late 1889–90 or the ungainly countenances of Madame Noblet (c.1897–98) andYvette Guilbert (1895). Such sculp-tural suggestions at times resemblemisshapen lumps of matter, butthey have their own slow-simmeringpotency, as does Rosso’s entire,astonishing oeuvre.

—Lilly Wei

ATLANTA

Elizabeth LideThe Museum of Contemporary Art

of Georgia

With a focus on organizing space,Atlanta-based Elizabeth Lide exploreshow we shape—and are shapedby—our personal past. Her recent,multi-part installation of sculpture,drawing, and stitchery, Putting theHouse in Order, which marked theculmination of a 2015/16 WorkingArtist Project Fellowship awarded by the museum, investigated theliteral and metaphorical influence of memory, family history, and accu-mulated domestic objects, all ofwhich Lide believes can be both bur-den and assurance.

How much space does the pastassume in our present lives? Ifmemory were tangible, how wouldits connections manifest? A framedpoem by the Chinese writer Ha Jinwas integral to Lide’s installation.Placed just beyond the airy, whitecurtains that established an entry

into the gallery, it hung on a wallthat Lide designed to reflect theprinciples of dynamic symmetry. Inthe text, the poet asserts that hispast is as much a part of himself asthe shadow that appears wheneverhe is in the sun. The past, he writes,“cannot be thrown off and its weight /must be borne, or I will becomeanother man.”

Lide’s attachment to the past isstrong. She engages its artifactsdeliberately, with an eye to structureas a means of investigating theirinfluence, but always with a light,meditative touch. Here, she trans-formed the cavernous white museuminto a quiet, contemplative, and

intimate space, an effect achieved,in part, through a centrally located,specially designed room-within-a-room, where these objects—and theorder imposed on them—could beconsidered by viewers with a focusequal to her own. Elegant white-on-white vitrines became reliquaries,directing attention to delicate hand-kerchiefs, tiny leather baby shoes,sewing scissors, and Lide’s father’sstethoscope.

Subdued color was another unify-ing, calming factor—baby dressesand christening gowns in hushedivory cotton batiste, generations oldand all but transparent with time, orwhispery silk slips and gowns in the

palest pastels. Lide introduced morecolor into her drawings—grid-like,reticulate, or shard-like shapes, likememory—which she calls in herstatement “architectural, but unreal-istic; shapes without function.”Though welcome pops of bright redcompleted collected paper, and anoccasional tangerine, ultramarine, orgeranium pink made its way into thestitchery on pieces of tattered quilt-ing displayed in embroidery hoops,Lide’s overall palette reinforced theabiding effects of time and memory.

Lide revisits the past and brings it forward into the present in a med-itation that, though it could haveeasily been otherwise, never dipped

Above and detail: Elizabeth Lide,

Putting the House in Order, 2016–17.

Built room inside gallery, paper

and paper pulp, paint, stitchery, Ha

Jin poem, drawings, clothes, family

objects, plaster, aluminum vases

poured from family objects, record

player, 8-mm film, and plaster and

paper-pulp vases with human hair

and pigment molded from family

objects, installation view.

72 Sculpture 36.8

into the maudlin or nostalgic. Partlyowing to the skill and respect with which she reinvents inheritedor accumulated objects—acting on them, in turn, as they haveacted on her—Lide steps into thesame shoes as the poet Ha Jin.Wall-high columns of overlapping,tobacco-brown sheets of paperinherited from a friend formed ananchoring installation along themuseum’s back wall. (Lide was bornand raised in Winston-Salem,North Carolina, tobacco country.)Lide claimed the pages for herself,inscribing centering circles of grayon each sheet, suggesting wholeness,repetition, and timelessness.

Lide molded some of what shecalls the “finer” inherited objects—crystal vases and pitchers, southerncrockery, jugs, and ice buckets—in aluminum, pastel paper pulp, orplaster—then reinforced them withstrips of fabric and her daughter’shair. She arranged two dozen or soof these sculptures on a single shelf,above which 8mm home movies fromthe 1940s and ’50s flickered in asilent, bright loop of smiles, Easterdresses, and summer days—lives,

fleeting and ephemeral, like timeitself, anchored by artifacts imbuedwith a personal sense of their endur-ing impact.

—Donna Mintz

BROOKLYN

Daniel BoccatoThe Journal Gallery

Brazilian-born Daniel Boccato’s firstsolo exhibition in New York pre-sented a fascinating demonstrationof pluralities in terms of the linearlogistics of fate. The exhibitionconsisted of half-a-dozen brightlycolored, monochrome bas-reliefs in resin-soaked, cast fiberglass. Thequirky silhouetted forms belie thesophistry of their facture—faux naïfthat is neither faux nor naïve.Boccato builds poorly constructedmolds in order to create intentionally“bad sculpture,” in the vein of so-called “Bad Painting.” Conceptually,this essentially disingenuous inherentcontradiction is like staring into afunhouse mirror in which one’s imageis repeated ad infinitum. Intentionallystupid equals intelligent equals stupid equals clever. So, is Boccatoclever or a jerk? Or are they the same

thing? It is a duplicitous conundrum.He is attempting to capture anintuitive or naturalistic gesture bycontravening craft while expertlyemploying current materials in asloppy fashion. Maybe it is irritatinglysmart; it is certainly not ignorant.

Many 20th-century Western Mod -ernists looked to indigenous tribalcultures in their desire to counter-mand European conventions of styleand materialistic elitism, which theydeclaimed as didactic and academic,a position that had alreadybecome academic by the time of its utterance. In fact, you couldargue that Modernism was becomingtribal in and of itself as it hastilydescended to the status of the mun-dane. How was that for a mouthfulof artspeak? This is exactly whatrecent New York art school gradu-ate Boccato is handing us. So, let’sget real. Does the stuff look goodor not?

The colors are acidic and nifty, thetitles obtusely cute, the subjectsambiguously referential or perhapswholly abstract within their legions of referents to their own art histor-ical lineage. I actually liked themquite a lot until I started thinkingabout all the layers of intention, andthen I just got a headache.

Millennials, raised on televisionshows like The Ren & Stimpy Show—an amalgam of digital effects and

self-indulgently lousy draftsman-ship—make sincerity a tough call.Jeff Elrod’s geeky paintings, forexample, are based on the mishan-dling of a computer mouse. A cou-ple of generations ago, Basquiattold me, “I let my dick do the think-ing.” That got him famous and deadin a hurry. Duchamp drew a mus-tache on a photo of the Mona Lisa100 years ago. Apparently con-trivance will get you somewhere inthe art industry. Where it will lead a talented and intriguing artist likeBoccato is something I will followwith honestly enthusiastic interestand curiosity. An urbane, ironic,albeit good-natured, masqueradingsmirk is not a smile. Radical chic is old news. My quaint personal idealis so old-fashioned, it may be revolutionary—make a masterpieceinstead of mocking it.

—Christopher Hart Chambers

NEW YORK

Kevin Francis Gray Pace Gallery

Kevin Francis Gray’s recent solo exhi-bition found the neoclassicallyinspired bronze and marble sculptormaking his boldest moves yet intesting the representational ideal ofthe human figure against a contem-porary perspective. More than ever,the exploration of tensions inherent in the dichotomy between figuration

Left: Daniel Boccato, laxface, 2016.

Epoxy, fiberglass, and polyurethane,

55.5 x 31 x 12 in. Above: Daniel

Boccato, installation view of “creep-

ers,” 2016.

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and abstraction, which has definedGray’s practice, becomes the centralsubject of his work. Bolstered notonly by his decision to employ marble

alone as his medium, but also by hiscontinuing interest in studying andthen departing from the classical fig-ural tradition, his new sculptures—

attentively and with deep consider-ation—openly render the figure asform.

Considering the sculpturestogether, it becomes difficult to tellat what degree of completion—orincompletion—each was meant to bepresented. Either individual heads or full bodies splayed out in dramaticpostures, these works, to varyingdegrees, feature distortions—inter-ventions that reveal the flesh, or matter, as amorphous. The visual andtactile effect is to render the verysubstance of the figure vulnerable asit seems to diffuse and decompose.

Salamander (2017), a larger-than-life bust, apparently male, intro-duced the exhibition while tellingsomething of Gray’s process. Theviewer recognizes the hair above theforehead, the creased eyebrows, the amusing, slightly undulatinglong nose, and mustache, but the mass is soluble, as if the marble

were clay. Though most of Gray’s distortions resemble melting matter,others reveal the work of tools.Reclining Nudes I boasts an arm likean arch, untamed in form, a headwhose shape is barely recognizableas such, and an amusingly accentu-ated bellybutton orienting everythingelse around it. In Reclining Nudes II,forces of abstraction seem to be inthe early stages of eating away at,or freeing, the figure. Seated Nude(2017), arguably the most exquisiteof Gray’s nudes, strikes an aestheti-cally pleasing balance between thecompeting forces of figuration andabstraction.

A series of busts—Hades’ Head(2016) and The Aristocrat (2017),among them—pick up whereSalamander left off, adding provoca-tive touches (the raw material of a foundational base left exposed,scratch-marks from tools readily visi-ble) that divulge the process behindthe making. In these new works, Grayhas not only put his formidable skillas a sculptor of marble on display, hehas also contributed to the discourseof the human figure as an ideal, yetever-changing form and inspiration.

—Arthur Ivan Bravo

NEW YORK

Marisa MerzThe Met Breuer

“The Sky is a Great Space” emphasizedthe consistency behind MarisaMerz’s body of work over chronology,starting with the larger-than-life“Living Sculpture” series (1966) at theexhibition entrance. These giantslinky-toy-like aluminum sheets hungfrom the ceiling in curls, spirals, andamorphous dangling “bodies”—most(excepting a wrapped armchair and a tent-like shape) without antecedentas “forms.” Breath alone could makethem sway. Though installed in a spacious setting at the Met Breuer,these same shapes were oncejammed together around a televisionset in the Merz home in Turin (asseen in a photo on the catalogue

Left: Kevin Francis Gray, Salamander,

2017. Carrara marble, 95 x 82 x 50 cm.

Below: Kevin Francis Gray, Seated

Nude, 2017. Carrara marble, 110 x

122 x 151 cm.

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cover), where one can imagine themmoving and bumping into people.

Merz has had a 50-year career. Shehas made heads in unfired clay,wax, bronze, and other materials;paintings with copper wire andembedded objects; knitted copperbooties and knitted diamonds; andmixed-media works with an etherealaura that somehow transcendsmedium and form. All of these vari-ous works activate space throughtheir placement, form, or suggestedmovement.

As the wife of Mario Merz (1925–2003), Marisa participated in ArtePovera, though her work was clearlydifferent. It was considered to evoke

“domestic and bodily forms”—a designation that acknowledged theuniqueness of her mostly untitledwork and her ambiguous statementsabout it. One untitled piece from1993, for example, features fivestave-like rows of copper wire withknitted copper square “notes” and a giant triangular copper addition.This seems to be an abstract workabout music, unrelated to the bodyor domestic issues. Yet Bea (1968)delicately, if sloppily, renders herdaughter’s name in knitted nylonthread and needles, and Testa (Head)(1984–95), an oblong of unfiredclay and wax wrapped in a wrinkledlead sheet, is clearly recognizable

as a human head, despite its unusualshape, with oddly expressive eyes andnose but no mouth.

A large untitled painting of acloaked figure is swathed in silverand gold paint, blue and red streaks,and crossed, in all directions, bystrands of copper wire. (The additionof nails, copper wire, and extra piecesmakes the paintings three-dimen-sional.) In other works, a blue blobrests on two long pieces of timber,and a square area of paraffin holdsa group of unfired clay pieces thatcould be heads or phallic or fist-likenobs. Merz’s portraits are hard to“read,” reminding me of Arshile Gorky,Odilon Redon, or Byzantine saints

done in a neo-primitive style—forinstance, an abstract gold head withone turquoise “eye” area. A 1983bronze head with only one eyebrow,a nose area, and an indentationinstead of an ear is clutched by anuneven number of thin, grasping fingers. Each Merz head resembles a lump with some markings, bumps,and furrows.

“The Sky is a Great Space” demon-strated how Merz’s vision hasexpanded and evolved over the yearswhile keeping a core expression of the head/figure as endlessly malleable. Almost every work is char-acterized by unpredictability and a sense of entering and searchingbeyond the visual. The “feel” sharedacross her work can be defined as exploratory—original, hand-made, and not like anything seenbefore.

—Jan Garden Castro

P ITTSBURGH

“so it is” Mattress Factory

The group exhibition “so it is,”curated by Belfast native John Carson,presented an impressive collection of installation work by seven artistsfrom Northern Ireland. A practicingartist himself, Carson lived inNorthern Ireland in the 1970s and’80s during the Troubles. He drew on this experience while making hisselections, choosing Ursula Burke,Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy, JohnKindness, Locky Morris, Philip Napier,and Paul Seawright for their sensi-tivity to this volatile time of politicaland nationalistic conflict. Although

Left: Marisa Merz, installation view

of “The Sky is a Great Space,” 2017.

Below left: Marisa Merz, Untitled,

no date. Unfired clay, paraffin, copper

wire, thumbtack, metallic paint, dried

leaf, alabaster, plastic, paper, plaster,

paint, graphite, colored pigments,

coin, gold leaf, metallic pigment, pas-

tel, colored pencil, and metal table,

table: 109 x 67 x 30 cm.

Sculpture October 2017 75

the work here was not directly aboutthe Troubles, it was neverthelessinformed by suffering and pain.

Entering the 1414 building, onestepped directly into Duffy’s TheSouvenir Shop, an installation com-memorating the 1916 Easter Rising.Known for multimedia work thattouches on Irish identity, history, andpolitics, Duffy created an environ-ment that resembled a store in whichhistorical, political, and social

events and people were redraftedinto thought-provoking everydaycommodities (the site was once theonly grocery store in the vicinity ofthe Mattress Factory). Cognizant ofWarhol’s use of pop culture, Duffymade multiples in the form of soapbars, flags, buttons, mugs, china,chocolate bars, and pillows decoratedwith images of guns, napkins, andpolitical figures of every stripe; therewere even voodoo-style dolls of

Trump, complete with pins. Everythingin the shop was for sale. An inter-esting contradiction flourished in this satirical setting, which was per-meated, on the one hand, by humor,and on the other, by a restrainingseriousness.

Seawright’s installation, TheyDropped Like Flakes, They DroppedLike Stars, featured somber black andwhite, large-scale photographsshot mostly in Braddock. Seawright’s

work has addressed the conflict inNorthern Ireland as well as otherwars around the world; in recentyears, he has turned to militaryrecruitment and the reporting offoreign wars in U.S. media. Thegloomy urban views shown herewere shot during his interviews withveterans in Pittsburgh.

Burke’s Embroidery Frieze (The Pol -iticians) astutely employed the ele-gant craft techniques of “women’swork” to comment on male powerand identity in global politics. Eightsizeable hand-embroidered panels,hung across a wall, depicted scenesof politicians from around the worldcaught in the act of fighting inoffice. She explains that she used “a medieval palette of colored threads[that] spill out of the interior frame,where the anxious battle for poweris trying frantically to be contained,and out onto the floor, referring to the dissolution of that power.” In a second installation, The Precariot,Burke placed black and white porce-lain busts on black pedestals.Though referencing Roman portrai-ture (and its use as a tool to legit-imize imperial authority), theseportraits reject the heroic and pow-erful in favor of a darker side of revolution and conflict. The name-less faces are bruised and injured,as though victims of abusive power.

Napier’s intriguing Further Progress(Champagne and Argonne), consistedof adapted banner stands, panoramicprints, and car headlights disclosinginverted landscapes. Viewers had to traverse the space in order to seethe suspended panels, each onewith cut holes emitting light. Thepictures portrayed sites in France

Left: Rita Duffy, The Souvenir Shop,

2017. Functioning shop with original

artwork and multiples for sale, instal-

lation view. Below: Ursula Burke,

Embroidery Frieze (The Politi cians),

2015. Embroidery thread on stretched

cotton, dimensions variable. Both

from “so it is.”

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where the 28th Infantry Divisionconducted operations in World WarI. Napier’s great-uncle JonathanNapier, who was killed at the Battleof Passchendaele in Belgium in 1917,inspired this work.

The artists featured in “so it is”grapple intelligently with the unset-tling character of violent conflict andits damage to society. Unlike manyother exhibitions devoted to politi-cal issues, this show was not overt,blatant, or ideologically illustrative;instead, its understated worksinspired reflection while calling atten-tion to tragedy in a far morenuanced manner.

—Elaine A. King

VANCOUVER

“Juxtapoz x Superflat”Vancouver Art Gallery

“Juxtapoz x Superflat,” a group exhibition of 36 international artistsorganized by Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd

and co-curated by Japanese artistTakashi Murakami and Evan Pricco,editor-in-chief of Juxtapoz Art &Culture Magazine, premiered as afour-day pop-up show at Pivot Art +Culture in Seattle; it then had athree-month run at the VancouverArt Gallery. The show, which wasconceived by Murakami, expandedon his 2001 “Superflat” exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Con -temporary Art to include artists whohave been featured in Juxtapoz, apublication known for promotingunderground and alternative con-temporary art. What unified this wide-ranging exhibition of many mediumsand stylistic idioms was the curators’practice of dissolving distinctionsbetween fine art, design, graphic arts,craft, and commercial art to show-case works that were by turns quirky,assertive, colorful, narrative, sleek,crude, humorous, cute, irreverent,and subversive.

The sculptural objects wereaccordingly diverse, ranging from thecartoony mixed-media Mound #1,The Legend by Trenton Doyle Hancock(part of his ongoing tale of “TheMounds” and their eventual triumphof good over evil) to Parra’s Anxiety, a sleek, pink, anthropomorphizedrabbit whose candy-sweet color and smooth, shiny surface contrastwith its anguished pose. There was a wall of painted vintage skate-boards by GATS sporting his signa-ture graffiti masked figures, as wellas playful ceramic sculptures of various sizes and textures by OtaniWorkshop that formed a curious and often whimsical mix of referencesto popular culture, mythology, andancient tomb sculptures.

The most startling and subversivework was He Xiangyu’s Death ofMarat, a realistic life-size figure of Ai Weiwei lying face down on a platform as if dead. The title draws

a connection between Ai’s politicallyengaged work and actions, whichhave so far resulted only in hisharassment, and the fate of the radi-cal 18th-century French journalistand politician Jean-Paul Marat, whosemurder was immortalized in Jacques-Louis David’s painting.

At the other end of the spectrum,David Shrigley’s campy Life Modelfeatured an over-life-size male nude,with huge ears and nose, positionedin the center of a gallery set up as a drawing studio. Visitors were invitedto sit down at easels and sketch themodel; their efforts were periodicallydisplayed on the surrounding walls.To add to the absurdity, every fewminutes, this sculptural “life” modelblinked his eyes and urinated intoa metal pail at his feet.

The sculptures with the most mag-netic allure were Elisabeth HigginsO’Connor’s three giant animal-likefigures, which looked like escapeesfrom a demonic fairy tale. Sportingenormous heads on tenuous bodies,a barking fox, downcast mule, and dog-like prancing creatures werefashioned from an assortment of found and scavenged materials,including Styrofoam, lumber, bedsheets, paper, cardboard, string,afghans, pins, and paint, in whatO’Connor calls “an aesthetic of buildup and erosion.” Cobbledtogether and fragile, like survivors in need of repair, they were simulta-neously imposing, frightening, and even threatening. These over-size, poignant, humanoid critterswere a riveting and fitting contribu-tion to an exhibition celebratingpopular culture with an anything-goes sensibility.

—Rachel Rosenfield Lafo

Left: David Shrigley, The Life Model,

2012. Mixed media, dimensions vari-

able. Bottom left: He Xiangyu, The

Death of Marat, 2011. Fiberglass

and silica gel, installation view. Both

from “Juxtapoz x Superflat.”

Sculpture October 2017 77

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VENICE

Venice Biennale Christine Macel, curator of theCentre Pompidou and of “Viva ArteViva,” the 57th InternationalExhibition, describes art as a forcefor life: “Art in itself helps us to navigate in these times; its veryexistence is a resistance in itself…Contemporary art cannot be under-stood as mere representation or imitation: it is a reality tout court,an instrument of inquiry, both of the creative process and of thedifferent questions pertaining toHumankind and the world.”

Macel’s selection of CaroleeSchneemann for the Golden LionLifetime Achievement Award, basedin part on a career devoted to pioneering performances and instal-lations probing the relationshipbetween the body and freedom,coupled with Tehching Hsieh’s representation of Taiwan and theguidelines of “Viva Arte Viva,” suggest that Venice in 2017 mightbe a fertile field for an investigationinto the theme of the body as art.But the show, which does not disap-point, is more than that. It is the task of sculpture to produce spatialexperiences, and many of the artistsquestion the position of the body in contemporary space, consideringit in relation to bio-politics andcontrol structures, machines andmedia, and the body politic. ForSchneemann, “It was in the bodythat the energy and the confirmationof what I’d seen and lived wascoherent. That was an area thathadn’t been colonized.” For Hsieh,who specializes in physical pain andendurance, performance becomes a form of education and a path to empathy. The deprivations andhardships to which he subjectshimself are no different than what

many people call life—clocking in,living outside without shelter, seek-ing privacy under constant surveil-lance.

Anne Imhof’s brilliant Faust (2017,German Pavilion) was awarded theGolden Lion for best national partic-ipation. As described by curator

Susanne Pfeffer, “Faust is both afive-hour production and a seven-month-long scenario comprised ofperformative dynamics, sculpturalinstallations, painterly touches,and rigorously choreographed visualaxes and movements that encom-pass the entire pavilion…the bound-

aries of the space disclose every-thing, making it both visible and subject to control. The heightenedfloor elevates bodies and modifiesspatial proportions. Next to us,below us, above us, there are thebodies of individuals, the bodies of the many.” Imhof’s approach to the

Above: Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017.

Right: Jesse Jones, Tremble Tremble,

2017.

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space of the German Pavilion, whichwas redesigned by the Nazis in 1938,is fascinating. She is not the firstartist to confront the massive scaleand stark appearance head-on. I wasreminded of Hans Haacke’s Germania(1993), in which he uprooted and

smashed the marble floor tiles. Haackewas one of the first artists to treat a national pavilion as a subject of inquiry, rather than just an exhi-bition space.

By inserting an elevated glass plat-form, Imhof alters the proportions

between body and space, creatingan emotional experience that playsout by standing above and on bodies.This element intertwines two archi-tectures of power, since clear glassis the material of choice wheneverarchitecture is about money and

power. According to Imhof, “Only byforming an association of bodies,only by occupying space can resis-tance take hold. On the balustradesand fences, underground and on theroof, the performers conquer andoccupy the room, the house, thepavilion, the institution, the state.”

Outside, Dobermans stand guard.Imhof links dog and man as under-going a shared transformation.As I entered the pavilion, my memory of the dogs’ movements translatedto the gestures and movement of the performers in the space beneathmy feet. While I see Imhof’s work assculpture, she defines it as a processof becoming a picture. Each picturehowever, depends on interactionwith the viewer: “A picture doesn’twork without the person looking at it.”

Jesse Jones’s Tremble Tremble (2017,Pavilion of Ireland) was inspiredby the death of Savita Halap panavar,a young Indian dentist living in Ireland, who died when she wasdenied a life-saving abortionbecause her fetus had a “heartbeat.”Her death sparked a protest move-ment to amend the Irish Con -stitution and give women controlover their own bodies. Jones, whosework focuses on political and socialhistories embedded within every- day life, considers the national pavil-ion as the site of an alternative law.Her title was inspired by thewages-for-housework movement inItaly in the 1970s, during whichwomen chanted, “Tremate, tremate,le streghe sono tornate!” (“Tremble,tremble, the witches have returned!”).Emerging from the current socialmovement in Ireland, the work callsfor a transformation of the relation-ship between church and state whilefurthering Jones’s interest in thosemoments when hidden historiescome to the surface, as in demon-

Left: Mark Bradford, interior view of

Process Collettivo, 2017. Below: Peju

Alatise, Flying Girls, 2016.

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strations and strikes. As a potentialcatalyst in this change, Jones pro-poses the return of the witch as afeminist archetype and disrupter withthe potential to transform reality.Tremble Tremble is accompanied bya sound score composed by SusanStenger, who creates what she calls“sonic reactions.”

Right Here, Right Now (2017),Qudus Onikeku’s contribution to theinaugural Nigerian Pavilion (whichalso featured Peju Alatise’s dramaticFlying Girls, 2016), uses performanceand dance in live and film versionsto shape a cultural and nationalidentity outside the colonialist nar-rative that has defined the country.Like Schneemann, Onikeku consid-ers the body to be the one thinguntouched by colonialism. As he seesit, the mind was “dented” by education, and the soul by imposed religion, but the body remaineduntouched, because even when sub -mitted to pain the body getsstronger. Onikeku’s work tries toaddress this through choreogra-phies that free the body from history,using dance to evoke a visceralresponse and trigger memories foraudience members.

Olafur Eliasson’s Green light—Anartistic workshop, part of “Viva ArteViva” in the Central Pavilion, involves40 individuals from a range of coun-tries—including Nigeria, Gambia,Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, andChina—who have signed up as par-ticipants through nine local partner-ing NGOs based in the municipalityof Venice. Divided into two teams,they take part for up to two monthsin the artistic project, as well as ina shared learning program, whichoffers free access to all its activities.Participants lead the daily lamp-building workshops, acting as hostsin the Green Light space and engag-ing with visitors.

Eliasson describes Green light as“a space of individual and collective‘world-making’ that…spreads out intosociety at large.” He sees its “multi-

layered hospitality” as testing“alternative models of community.[It] is an act of welcoming, addressedboth to those who have fled hard-ship and instability in their homecountries and to the residents of thecities receiving them.” Like ThomasHirschhorn and his GramsciMonument in the Bronx, Eliassonand Green light have been the targets of extensive criticism. What,for some, seems altruistic and con-sciousness-raising can also appearexploitative, slumming with the“other” under the auspices of polit-ically correct art. There is a kind of voyeurism and “colonialism” atwork in turning immigrants into per-formers and placing them on displayfor collectors. Green light mighthave aspired to Gramsci’s idea of a “counter-hegemonic” struggle—advancing alternatives to dominantideas of what is normal and legiti-mate—but that notion has troubletranslating into art. Many in the art world agree with Hirschhorn’sassessment that the project itselfis enough: “Art—because it’s Art—is resistance as such. Resistance to aesthetical, cultural, politicalhabits.”

Mark Bradford’s involvement withlocal communities in Venice standsin stark contrast. In conjunctionwith Tomorrow is Another Day, hisU.S. Pavilion installation, he hasembarked on a six-year collaborationwith the Venetian nonprofit socialcooperative Rio Terà dei Pensieri,which provides employment oppor-tunities to incarcerated men andwomen and supports their re-inte-gration into society. Process Collet -tivo aims to launch a sustainablelong-term program that raisesawareness of both the penal systemand the success of the social cooperative model. Motivated by aninquiry into “need” and “researchinto access,” Bradford’s pluralisticand inclusive vision of the worldredefines what it means to be anartist and a citizen. Perhaps it is no accident that his project grewfrom listening to the needs of theparticipants (and not the other wayaround), given his own experiencesas a gay African American.

“Viva Arte Viva,” though less stri-dently political than past install-ments of the biennial, still makesbold claims for art. From the individ-ual to the collective, to the social

body politic, it celebrates the revo-lutionary and liberating potential ofart. The question, as always, is whobenefits. Paolo Barrata, president ofthe Biennale, invoked the old ideaof humanism: “We decided it wouldbe useful to dedicate this edition to a reflection which, while startingfrom a vision of the world as a placeof conflict and falsity, shows thework of the artist as an act of free-dom and resistance…This humanism,through art, celebrates mankind’sability to avoid being dominated bythe powers governing world affairs,which if left to their own devices cangreatly affect the human dimension.”Reinterpreting what some might con-sider an outmoded idea in the face of today’s violence, inequality, andupheaval is not without relevance:Italian Renaissance art and philoso-phy—both spurred on by human-ism—were the products of a timejust like ours; one can only hopethat the benefits of art reach beyondthe patrons, the star artists, and thecognoscenti this time around.

—Barbara T. Hoffman

Olafur Eliasson, Green light—An

artistic workshop, 2017.