Going Underground in Venice: An Interview with Gilad Ratman

Gilad Ratman's video projects demand an extreme physicality from the friends and associates whom he enlists as participants. In Che Che the Gorgeous (2005), they lie on a cracked desert floor in what look like cocoons, singing and wailing, sounds that are then mixed in a home studio by a DJ. In Alligatoriver (2006), they undertake a noisy bacchanal in a supposedly alligator-infested river. Often his players act barely civilized, or borderline insane, with a propensity for wordless vocalizations, shaggy hair and unkempt couture.

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New Foundations: An Interview with Katrin Sigurdardottir

To visit Katrín Sigurđardóttir's installation Foundation at the Venice Biennale, you must travel to the Palazzo Zenobio in the city's Dorsoduro quarter. There you traverse a courtyard garden, beyond which lies a spacious, grassy yard flanked by walls in diverse masonry. On the far side of the yard is a plain gray building that looks as though it has been sliced through horizontally by the black-and-white-tiled floor of a second, entirely unrelated structure. The plain building is an ex-laundry—a preexisting, if now disused, space—while the floor, which protrudes into the courtyard and on which visitors can walk, is Sigurđardóttir's contribution to this year's Icelandic pavilion, one of the many national pavilions situated within the fabric of the city. Read More

Venice Biennale, The Nationals: U.S.A.

For those who have the 55th Venice Biennale on their itineraries, we offer a quick pick over the coming days of one- and two-person shows at the national pavilions. With 88 countries participating, 10 for the first time, it's impossible to be comprehensive. So we aim to serve visitors with limited time, attending just the two main venues: Giardini and Arsenale. Wherever you wander in Venice, however, keep your eyes peeled for the red Biennale logo, signaling nationals tucked into churches and palazzi.

SITE SPECIFICITIES: U.S.A.: With "Triple Point," Sarah Sze deconstructs the U.S. pavilion (in the Giardini) in a space-straddling installation comprising thousands of souvenirs of Venice and of her own labor, from color-coordinated postcards and sand to boulders and sawed-off ladders.

Holly Block, the director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Carey Lovelace, a critic and independent curator, proposed Sze for the Biennale and organized the exhibition, and the Bronx Museum serves as the commissioning institution.

Photos by Paola Ferrario.  Read More

Vienna's Wonders Back on View

After more than a decade, during which it underwent renovation and the restoration of its objects, the famed Kunstkammer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna reopened Mar. 1. With some 2,000 objects on display, the collection of works in precious metals and gemstones, ivories, sculptures, scientific instruments, clocks, game boards and other finely crafted items was amassed by various members of the Habsburg nobility over centuries. This is the first major reinstallation of the Kunstkammer since it initially went on view in 1891 in the mezzanine galleries—where it remains—of the newly constructed museum.
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