
To visit Katrín SigurÄ‘ardóttir'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 SigurÄ‘ardóttir's contribution to this year's Icelandic pavilion, one of the many national pavilions situated within the fabric of the city. Read More
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