Illustrated essay on Illumination exhibition and the curato-

An extra exhibition ILLUMInations arised to break up the entity of national pavilions and think of nation in a "contemporary" sense and not as a political structure with content. The title is in fact very decent and does not put much strength on anything particular. ILUMMI evokes many literary, historical and aesthetics' assumptions but this would not be enough for a keyword of planned event and this is what juxtaposition of both ILLUMI and nation in one illumination works for. Bice Curiger explains the nation part by raising five questions of the nation to each of the artists. Is the art community a nation?How many nations are inside you?Where do you feel at home?Which language will the future speak?If art were a state what would the constitution say?The artists' answers were published in the Venice Biennale catalogue. These five questions put together make a right and cohesive predicate and explain a lot of what Bice Curiger thinks. Art community include any artist who naturally stand out from the cultural venture point and do not conceal his/her concerns beyond nationality. They may feel cognate together within the similar approach and this could be the reason for regarding them as a nation. "How many nations are inside you?" is a very similar point. Pertains more to the traditional perception of nation but widens it's context and disrupts ac-quired meaning of oneness and exceptionality when states in the question that there is originally more then one nation in you. "Where do you feel at home?" is the most approving and " peace-generating" inquiry. It questions any membership and turns to internal feeling of comfort in a single place. "What language will the future speak?" A clean, slightly provocative but not predetermined inquiry. It plays as a glance for potential changes in the future. Knowing future will be different there is a notion of undeniable need for flex-ibility. "If art were a state what would the constitution say?" This is least felicitous question for me, implies flippancy which did not appear previously. Former simple sincerity changed into jocularity. However, this question is a point to consider art as a labelled and profiled conception what might be true in some cases. These questions were not mentioned in the Curiger's essay on ILUM-MInations exhibition. I found her talks much more sourceful and interesting. The official text is a little overfilled with minute commentaries and thoughts , it is in between guide for a huge exhibition and concept statement but none of them emerges clearly for the reader. Nevertheless, text gives a lot of infor-mation of participating artists and describes their work fluently throughout whole essay. The main stress is put on four para-pavilions which are large-scale pieces of artists chosen by Bice Curiger and are an exhibition space for other works at the same time. Four artists are from four far different coun-tries: US, Australia, China and Poland. The work of Song Dong, a Chinese born artist, is a huge venture of trans-position of more than one hundred wardrobe doors from his mother's and neighbours' houses. Doors are installed together, in a one line resembling a labyrinth, or upwards, in a shape of a house. This para-pavilion is semi-trans-parent, with no interchangeably definite structure. Visually it looks a bit as upscaled and freely transformed cage for a birds. Song's work is very domestic and light. It is also very literary- it is made form "home" and it is about home. A big part of a piece is a non-forgetable effort of shipping this matter from re-mote China to the place of the event. Authenticity is the most individual and inner feature of this piece. This is also a part of Venice Biennale where such things come true.

Other than pavilions is Roman Onadak's replica of Fenix 2, the capsule used to rescue the Chilean miners from deep underground about a year ago. It is put in a dimmy, darkened, empty space with a string attached to it's top and go-ing skywards along the black tube installed above the capsule. In the very end of a tube imitating tight entrance to the miners trap there is a mark of blue. I stumbled upon a title of an article on this work "Deep and meaningful(...)" It is in fact not without a specific meaning. The work is strictly attached to a single moment of drama which as any other tragedy becomes quickly an ordinary fact. There is not much more than a memory of a very recent history or it's close consequences in this work. A fear, but related to a very specific situation where it arised to an abnormal size, and this, is worth remembering and con-templating . Similar theme of documentation paralleled to regret or disapprovement is Venn Diagram of Amalia Pica. Venn diagrams are pictorial charts visualizing all possible logical relations between collections of sets, also used to illustrate basic connotations in different domains of knowledge like linguistics, statistics, com-puter science. The diagram was prohibited during Dictatorship in Argentina in the primary schools, where she grew up, because of it's potential of causing critical thinking. As oppose to it, Amalia installed the object in a gallery space. She pointed out an error. With no direct association other then aesthetical are paintings and plexi glasses of DAS INSTITUT. Colour is the main feature of this work. Plexiglasses are set as an extension of walls and perpendicularly to the paintings so that one can look through them at paintings and movement in the gallery. Colours of plexi-glasess and paintings are both bright and subdued. There is a 80s-90s aesthetics of German party, young techno, simple games, geometry. And this, compound with fairly realistic surrealism of forms in the paintings is chopped with trans-parent coloured screens among them. A mixture of visual experiences. Collabo-ration of Kerstin Bratsch and Adele Roder called Das Institut (name also works for these visuals) is a long-term team-work of two German artists who moved to New York few years ago. Together, they repeatedly work on "viral market-ing" of art and the persona of the artist, which seem as a collaboration between art and design. This might come from the assumption of art as a ration of the person (artist) and design as a marketing, utilization or art sale. Their work for biennale is clean, almost digital in reception and it's vibe is very uplifting. The Illuminations exhibition is very diversified and indefinite. Many of the art-ists are under 35 and apart from this there are not many mutual factors. While listening to Bice Curiger I found her an excellent curator. Non-prejudiced, open for good, cautious in her speech, understanding certain used aspects of art as they are. Her answer on national pavilions is the most apt:

I think national pavilions are what make the Venice Biennale so unique. I don't mean to be conservative: the history of pavilions is a sign of the countries' desire to participate in an international exchange, a way to highlight cultural developments in a globalized context. I see the Biennale as a sort of borderless map - you can move around without a definite goal.

Non agitated approach is very right. If Venice Biennale is an obsolete event this come from many sources and characteristics of this show. I think this might be the matter of its bigness which hinders the quality. I do not mean this in a bad manner, largeness of the event disables homogenous worth of whole and obstructs the good. Maybe because there is not that much of good art to show every year and minority of artists would try to show their work in a such fa-mous and common event. This seems very difficult and its unsuccess does not have to come from separation for nations. However, this separation may sug-gest a certain, limited character of art drawing to Venice.

Bice asked how does she feel about prizes at Venice Biennale which may be suggesting "best artist" answered:

Well, all this is part of the symbols that society has invented to show recog-nition to an artist. I cannot be against these gestures. I love artists. I think they should get recognition, so I totally play this game.

Non agitated and reasonable. The way world works in certain areas is un-changeable and this does not have to be our grief. Her essay on Illuminations exhibition is less successfull. It is not as readable and moderate. She let in the text few unneeded notes and lost control on it. The main sense got entangled.

As if the voices of the artists had been physically loaded into the book, a silver line flows along the bottom edge of each page, an image that evokes a collective contemporary mental landscape.

This sentence is actually funny, the mental landscape. The essay lacks mod-esty in many parts. The theme of domesticity is also manifest in the Para-Pavilions where home, or the kitchen, is exposed in a metaphorical sense to a series of tipping points, a drought of air that makes it susceptible and ready for something unknown, for the convergence of "introversion" and "extraversion".

In ending part of the text there are few sentences loaded towards the end-with used curatorial expressions which do not stand for dialogue between author and the reader. I think the reader is often omitted. Curatorial texts seem to be a temptation for use of specific combinations of uncommon words, treating them attractively and not in a terms of ultimate meaning. Luckily there are many different sources of knowledge other than curatorial texts.