Feuilleton by Angel Vergara (Belgium's pavillion)

“The Venice Biennale 2011 and our upcoming New York art trip 2012”

Our recent visit to ILLUMinations, the 54th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia was indeed a remarkable experience! Founded in 1895, the Biennale is considered by many the most prestigious contemporary arts festival in the world. In addition to 89 national participations, this year the Bienniale ARTE features the works of 83 artists and more than 37 collateral events. Indeed our delight was amplified by Venice itself with its overwhelming beauty and endless cultural and artistic heritage!

We found particularly exciting the pavilions of Belgium (Feuilleton by Angel Vergara), France (Chance by Christian Boltanski), the Republic of Korea (The Love is Gone but the Scar Will Heal by Lee Yongbaek), Japan (teleco-soup by Tabaimo) and Denmark (Speech Matters by 18 international artists). As for Canada’s representation (Exhume to Consume by Steven Shearer), we fully agree with Bernard Lévy from Vie des Arts, it is not at the hauteur of the event.

We also enjoyed very much the Biennale’s curated show and particularly the works by established and emerging artists including Cindy Sherman, Llyn Foulkes, Nathaniel Mellors, Pipilotti Rist and Christian Marclay with his amazing 24-hour film The Clock.

By the way, during our upcoming trip to NYC (March 8-11, 2012) we will have the opportunity to see a retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s works at the MoMa! For more information and to register, please follow this link: https://walkthearts.com/_art_tours/art_tour_new_york.shtml

Finally and as we always say, it is important to continually visit contemporary art shows because the more we see, the more we become critical spectators and conscious about the different “artworlds” (Danto) that surround us.

Cindy Sherman at the Venice Biennale 2011