Page 56 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

SPAIN
Perforated by Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego

PERFORATED BY ITZIAR OKARIZ Commissioner: AECID Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion Internacional Para El
AND SERGIO PREGO IS THE Desarrollo. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Union Europea y Cooperacion.
PROJECT CURATED BY PEIO Curator: Peio Aguirre.
AGUIRRE.
Exhibitors: Itziar Okariz, Sergio Prego.
Venue: Giardini

A body in an empty space generates tension with the place where
it is inserted, because the enveloping volume of the architecture
reflects the minimum materiality of the body. The art of Itziar Okariz
and Sergio Prego is defined by a principle of immanence in this
body-space relationship. Drawing on economical resources, they
create an austere and powerful body of work that is complex in its
simplicity. Their work is characterized by the creation of spare forms
and images that share in that will to transgression, to resistance,
that Susan Sontag would have defined as “radical style.”
The main gesture and through-line of this exhibition consists in
opening and expanding the space by way of an “occupation” which
in reality is the opposite, an act of vacating or emptying. Sontag
noted in her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence” that “not only does
silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any
given silence has its identity as a stretch of time being perforated
by sound.” To perforate is to make a partial hole in something – an
object, image or space – passing through it while offering a glimpse
of what was there before, altering it in the act of perforation.
This exhibition by Sergio Prego and Itziar Okariz is conceived as
a perforation, in a metaphorical as well as literal sense, through
actions, sound, image, sculpture and architecture. (excerpt)
SWITZERL AND

Moving Backwards
PAULINE BOUDRY / RENATE LORENZ, Commissioner: Swiss Arts Council Pro-Helvetia: Marianne Burki, Sandi Paucic, Rachele Giudici Legittimo.
MOVING, BACKWARDS, 2019 Curator: Charlotte Laubard.
(DETAIL). INSTALLATION WITH FILM, Exhibitors: Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz.
CURTAIN, STAGE, BAR, PUBLICATION
AND PERFORMANCES. Venue: Giardini

Since the beginning of their collaboration in 2007, Pauline
Boudry / Renate Lorenz have been continuously reflecting on the
visibility and the existence of the other beyond the binarisms
and categories that define our identities. Through filming and
staging their performances in installations, the artist duo seeks
to reveal what, in the constructed and composite character of
identities, can undo our stereotypical representations in order
to consider new relationships and to invent new modes of
coexistence. As Charlotte Laubard observes: «Pauline Boudry /
Renate Lorenz conceive their installations as devices that lead us
to renegotiate our representations. Their work produces a double
inversion: it introduces gestures, images and objects that refer to
current political and social issues.
At the same time, it grants these elements a high degree of
autonomy so that they can interact with the public and establish
interrelations that challenge our modes of perception and
identification». (excerpt)

56 WORLD of ART