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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Triumph of Life: An Interview with Marc Quinn

One of the most talked-about exhibitions during the opening days of the 55th Venice Biennale was British artist Marc Quinn's self-titled solo show at Venice's Giorgio Cini Foundation (through Sept. 29). The foundation is located on the small island where the facade of Palladio's iconic San Giorgio Maggiore church rises above the canal, providing a dramatic backdrop for Quinn's Breath (2012), a 36-foot-tall inflatable gray sculpture of an armless, nude, very pregnant woman sited on the plaza outside the church. Read More

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

The Backstory of the Venice Biennale's Encyclopedic Palace

Most people in the art world scratched their heads when the title of Massimiliano Gioni's exhibition for the 55th Venice Biennale was announced in March. "The Encyclopedic Palace" takes its name from an 11-foot-tall architectural model built in the 1950s in rural Pennsylvania by an Italian-American mechanic/inventor-cum-untrained artist named Marino Auriti (1891-1980). The wood, bronze and plastic model is the touchstone of Gioni's show, which features work by more than 150 other artists, many of whom also lean toward the self-taught camp. Read More