Page 32 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

BEL ARUS
Exit
KONSTANTIN SELIKHANOV. EXIT, Commissioner: Siarhey Kryshtapovich. Curator: Olga Rybchinskaya.
2016-2019. MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION Exhibitor: Konstantin Selikhanov.
FRAGMENTS OF THE INSTALLATION. Venue: Spazio Liquido, Sestiere Castello 103, Salizada Streta
PHOTO ARTYOM RYBCHINSKY.

This total installation format forces all elements to mingle into a
homogenous whole, producing an unique aura of the important
message and indirect statement. It designs the views’ reaction
within the semantic space by setting up individual light zones
around meaningful objects sublimed in the overall darkness, thus
generating nonlinear narrative structure. The project exists in
many dimensions. It engages time and history to mark the period
of change and redefine a man’s place in it. This is a protracted
“transition” process. This transformation is perceived by some as
a post-cataclysm, and as pre-catastrophe by the others. Future is
unpredictable. It feels like an accelerating motion with no signposts
and mapped routes. It becomes the dominant experience to the
world. Not only it modifies the environment; it distorts the very
human being, displacing him into the new sort of space “between”.
His depersonalized figure celebrates the paradigm shift: from soviet
to post-soviet, from local to global etc. Truth and lie, evil and good,
happiness and unhappiness – the opposites comprising one’s
life gradually blur and mingle. Unsupervised by history, the time
arouses unrest, mistrust and simplification. This new power shapes
anonymous figures, post-images, producing a “no-face” effect.
(excerpt)

BELGIUM

Mondo Cane
JOS DE GRUYTER & Commissioner: Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
HARALD THYS - MONDO Curator: Anne-Claire Schmitz.
CANE (PIZZACOOK)
- COURTESY OF THE Exhibitor: Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys.
ARTISTS Venue: Giardini

‘Mondo cane’ is an Italian expression that took on a very particular
inflection following the release of an immensely popular film of
that title in 1962. The film, which documents a series of cultural
practices from across the world, spawned a genre – mondo films –
whose defining characteristic is a pseudo-documentary approach
that focuses on the sensational and privileges effect at the expense
of content. Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys have the habit of
distilling fictions out of a reality that is, sometimes, ‘too real.’ Both
willingly concede that they feel attracted to the psychotic state of
contemporary societies, a state that they simultaneously dread and
disseminate in their work. MONDO CANE, which seizes visitors with
its off-kilter realism, is in every way a continuation of this practice.
Without ever falling into cynicism or moralism, the artists deftly
and wittily transform that which resembles fear or a latent state
into something willed, critical and counter to the status quo. The
exhibition further develops through a publication and a website.
The exhibition further develops through a publication and a website.
The publication MONDO CANE consists of a compilation of articles
that document a variety of facts and events of the world around
us. Each article contains a descriptive text – appearing randomly in
Dutch, English, French, German and Italian – as well as one or more
illustrations. (excerpt)

32 WORLD of ART