Breaking news – being an artist is hard.

We’re generally broke, and when we do come by a little money, we usually spend it on stuff to make more art, which perplexes the normal people around us.

And making art means being immersed in the reality of the human experience, which – spoiler alert – sort of sucks these days.

That’s why this particular group of artists gets together every two years to travel to an imaginary land – one in which all the nations of the earth meet in a place of hallucinatory beauty and grandeur to make and experience art, art, and more art.

We mean Venice of course. We went in May, and it was a salve for the soul, as usual. We couldn’t see everything that we wanted to see, as usual. We allowed ourselves to harbor a tiny dream of going back to see more in the fall after the crowds were gone, as usual. There is no way we are going to be able to make that plan work, as usual. [SOUND EFFECT: deep resigned sigh.]

So we’re going to have to make do with our memories. Here are some new WHAT WE LIKED posts, and links to some of the older ones.

Enjoy the read, keep working, and send us plans for art trips we can do together to warm our collective souls.

INTUITION at Palazzo Fortuny

by Coral Woodbury, for The Biennial Project

“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.” Kahlil Gibran

“When the body functions spontaneously, that is called instinct. When the soul functions spontaneously, that is called intuition.” Shree Rajneesh

Peter Greenaway's installation at Palazzo Fortuny during the 1993 Venice Biennale left such an impression on me that the one thing I knew heading to Venice was that I would return to the Palazzo. Even in Venice this is a unique space, embodying faded and decaying grandeur while preserving the home and collections of Mariano Fortuny, an early twentieth-century stage, fashion, and lighting designer. So the house is a stage set of sorts, and one an artist like Greenaway knew how to animate eerily.

As it turned out, I was in time for the sixth and last collaboration of Axel Vervoordt, Belgian antiquarian, art dealer, interior designer and curator, and Daniela Ferretti, Director of Palazzo Fortuny. Intuition was absolutely worth the 25 year wait. READ MORE

The Irish Pavilion

by Anne Murray, for The Biennial Project

“My broken bones shall be a weapon, chaos is the bread I eat!”

photo of Jesse Jones’ installation by Anne Murray

With an impressive sense of dignity, profound understanding of the human condition, and in full knowledge of the challenge that women face in a rapidly morphing set of boundaries created through elusive and divisive judiciary systems in Ireland and abroad, Jesse Jones has created a meta world which challenges the legal system, where what we think and see implores us to react and evolve or suffer the vile subsistence living that will ensue in the storm of chaos unleashed in the form of women forced to take justice into their own hands.

Tremble, Tremble, curated by Tessa Giblin, is more than a pavilion, it is a space between, a space possessed by magic and where fears take shape in an unearthly form, as a human buried under the bog, preserved in flesh, but morphed, shape shifted into something beyond comprehension.

Here, women have an enormous tempest of power controlled only by the force of the black hole of the body of Olwen Fouéré, as a photon encircling and drawn into it only when encountered by the the Higgs boson particle, a weight that gives our thoughts as light mass, and thus, slows us down; we are trapped in this hole with her, as if time would stop or else become eternal, both one in the same. READ MORE

The Mongolian Pavilion

by Victor Salvo for The Biennial Project

photo by Victor Salvo

Lost in Tngri

Fire. The Sun is Heaven sent. The Sunfire makes the pastures grow the pasture grass. The sun droughts up the land or runs away for too long. Cattle sheep ram lamb burn to black. Fire lovemaking sperm seek along the skulls.

Fire droughts up the land. Circling us. Cooking us. Sits down on a lone fire red fish still alive, Sun, still swimming above the scorched economic lines.

Fire. Fire your weapon straight and true. The scope tells you where to aim. Fire molds the bronze. Fire curves the barrel. Water remembers and walks the rifle after rifle, a flock of the ungainly.

Water flows in a ribbon, flows the trees, rivers come from Tngri, the gods, down from the sky, up to the sky.

photo by Paul K. Weiner

NOTES FROM VENICE

by Charlene Liska, originally published in the North End Waterfront

In this era of biennials, The Venice Biennale, the vast international art festival begun in 1895, is the grandmother of them all. While Venice is revered for it’s great Renaissance and earlier art, the Biennale has always managed to feature avant-garde and contemporary art, and somehow the contrast enlivens both worlds.

I attended the first week of the Venice Biennale with an East Boston-based arts organization, “The Biennial Project” which began about 10 years ago as a send-up of the many pretensions of the art world and has since grown into a world-wide network of people who care a lot about art and not at all about the pretensions. The BP stages its own counter-biennials, including one in Marfa, Texas and four Boston Biennials that have been held here locally, last in 2016. These people are the most serious fun around!

This year, in addition to attending the official Biennale, the Boston-based organization held its own parallel Venice event that featured several hundred artists from across the globe. Participating artists included German-born painter-sculptor Artemis Herber, Florida-based photographer Barbara Revelle, videographer Tom Corby from London, and Zsolt Asztalos, who represented Hungary in the official 2013 Biennale but who chose this year to appear in the Boston organization’s parallel event instead. Poetry, in English and Italian, was recited, locals and visitors confabbed, words and prosecco flowed liberally. One couldn’t really say it was a bit of Boston in Venice; it was more like a bit of the world, that had come together under prompting from Boston on a dark night in a Venice neighborhood to talk, and drink, and talk some more about art, because they admired the weird and interesting spirit of the Biennale and the art works that were on display.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: CLICK HERE to see the galleries of beautiful work exhibited in ArtVenice Biennial IV.]

And there were some stunning pieces in the Venice Biennale, not least, the small old wooden country house with holes in its roof that was imported in its entirety from the Republic of Georgia, down through which the artist, Chachkhiani, caused artificial rain to pour unceasingly, covering everything inside with dripping water; it captured everyone’s worst fear about waking up in the middle of the night to hear water dripping, and finding that somehow a hole has opened up in the roof — in this case many holes! — and the rain is starting to come in. And in the Italian pavilion, Il Mondo Magico, an exhibit which showed an assembly line in which simulated dried and mummified life-sized corpses of Christ were manufactured from plastic materials and then were heated in ovens and allowed to molder, and then, once finished, were broken into large pieces and displayed, in more or less random order, on a dark wall. It was about imitation versus reality, yes, and the almost unbelievable power of technology, but also about magic, and how and why people hope, and the power of belief. Of course, there were more conventional pieces too, in their hundreds; but this gives you an idea.

About timing, for anyone who might be thinking of attending — and it’s well worth going to see! — it makes a Venice trip even more dramatic than it would otherwise be. Either go early, as I did this year, in May, for the excitement of the crowds and the fun of getting there first, or otherwise consider waiting till late in the year — say, October month — which can be exquisite too, since the fact that there are no crowds then means you can actually see and enjoy and understand things in your own good time.

And full marks to “The Biennial Project”: they’re projecting Boston onto the global arts scene in a singular way, and they do it basically because, being artists themselves, they can’t help it. These people are living to make, and view, and talk about art. Interesting way to live.

The Taiwanese Pavilion

by Barbara Jo Revelle, for The Biennial Project

Ok, I’ll admit this up front. I’m wildly attracted to durational performance art. I do it myself sometimes. Not so long ago, as part of an art installation scrutinizing my father’s big game hunting practice, I walked continuously - eight hours a day, seven days a week, for two weeks - on a treadmill set up in a gallery. I stopped only to take pees. While I moved I edited 100+ hours of my father’s old hunting films and videos - mostly shots of him watching game from blinds, hanging cut up animal parts baits in trees, or posing with dead animals and the African natives who helped him track and kill them. This footage was projected onto the gallery walls in front of me as I walked and worked. READ MORE

READ MORE OF WHAT WE LIKED IN VENICE

XXOO,

The Biennial Project

The Biennial Project had always heard about the cheerful confluence of outright racism, homophobia and xenophobia that takes place at Boston’s Annual drunken Irish soiree known as ‘The Southie St. Patrick’s Day Parade’. Needless to say we stayed away for many a moon. This year, upon hearing about an alternative, inclusive march called The Peace Parade The Biennial Project decided it was our duty as citizens of the great City of Boston to show up. The only way to change  opinion on race and gender is through exposure.

“We’re here we’re queer, we’re fabulous don’t fuck with us!”

Well, from what we witnessed, we were totally wrong about the attitude of the main event. Though the crowd was predominately white and Irish (it is their day) there were many ethnicities guzzling Vodka out of water bottles along side the pale skinned ginger haired crowd doing the same. Even with the shame of the gays still not being allowed to march, we saw a little bit of everything mixed in with the Bag Pipers, step dancers and drunken union workers. There were ghost busters, Storm Troopers, Renaissance people, Rat Pack impersonators, Latin Salsa dancers, skipping bananas, Hip Hop Clubs and a flat bed truck of what we think might have been Russian Strippers. It resembled the array of characters that show up for Biennial Project events. At times it felt like the color altered acid days of our teen years. We went to make a statement but in reality whole day was big green, foolish fun.

For our global fans who might not know anything about our town’s history, here is a little lesson. In the 19th century Irish immigrants started to come to Boston in droves.

The Biennial Project is not sure of the exact figures. We are far too lazy to look them up, but trust us; lots and lot of Irish came. So many that Boston still takes on the personality and flavor of the old country. With communities as tight as the Irish were in Boston intolerance formed. In the Early 1970s there were outright riots when the city started to bus school children from one neighborhood to another to harbor diversity and equality of education. For over 20 years Gay groups have had their applications rejected by Allied War Veterans Council who host the parade. In 1995 the rejection was taken all the way to the US Supreme court in the case Hurley vs. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Group of Boston, which ruled parade organizers do have a legal right to decide who marches in the parade.

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We never attended the Parade because of the outright prejudice and also, lets face it, a big drunken Irish posse can seem scary.

Last year an organization called Veteran’s for Peace started their own parade, after the big parade, to let the rejected groups march. Yes, it is sort like crumbs from the table, but it gives visibility to the fact that the host organization still has fear in their hearts. The Biennial Project tries to conjure up some compassion for these old men who are living a lifetime of shame for that blowjob they gave as a teenager - but really. Is it too hard to
admit you enjoyed it? Anyhow, The Biennial Project went to support The Veteran’s for Peace and stand up for our own rights. Kara Suffredini, executive director of MassEquality, said it well -

“I think this is the work we do every day of changing hearts and minds. There will be a day when we will be welcomed in this parade.”

 
So enough with the politics, we went to stand up for our rights but we were really surprised by the inclusive, positive, fun and slightly weird energy of the big green party. What does all this have to do with art? As usual we don't know or care - we had a friggin time. Witness through our (Fine Art) photos.

Shit We Saw at The 2012 Whitney Biennial

OK, so we know The Whitney Biennial 2012 closed months ago. And we know we should have told you on our blog about the shit we saw right when we returned from the ‘Special Friends of The Whitney Biennial Preview Party’ that we, The Biennial Project, attended. Well if that bothers you - ‘Eat Us’ (we’ll enjoy it). This can only mean that you have not gone on our Facebook page and joined ‘liked’ The Biennial Project Page because we did report on the exhibit there. So that this doesn’t happen again please like us at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Biennial-Project/208168052547147

In presenting ‘The Shit we Saw Whitney Biennial 2012 Edition’ we would like to add the precursor that some of what is written are our own opinions and words and some of the text we used has been lifted directly from other people’s articles. We do not know anymore where most of this came from because we keep terrible track of our footnotes. If we plagiarized you please take this as the compliment that it is meant to be. It means we like your voice - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Anyhow let’s start off by mentioning Tom Thayer’s reddish room of puppets and crane paintings. These make him a modern mythographer by way of William Kentridge and Balinese shadow-plays. Thayer’s work lyrically combines elements frail and feeble in nature, crudely parroting reality, in an effort to reveal the poetry that underlies our own existence. The very kind lady in the wheelchair pictured below told us all of that. She also said his work feels most at home alongside the ostensibly shambolic music of freewheeling experimental Brooklyn groups like the No-Neck Blues Band and Amolvacy. She then asked if we would kiss her pineapple. We liked the portable children's record players so much we bought one on EBay later that week. They turn and make playful music from playful record albums. So much fun!!

Next let us visit the exhibition of Dawn Casper who set up her studio on the 4^th floor of The Whitney for the duration of the show. She made a deep statement about society not supporting artists or something like that, or maybe just the bad economy in general, we’re not entirely sure. She is very smart. What a great way to get free rent and great exposure for a few months. Everybody asks her where she goes to the bathroom. They ask all day, really. The Biennial Project didn't ask her where she goes potty. We simply asked her to sign one of the 'Limited Edition Whitney Biennial 76 Artists Trading Cards' we made of her, to honor her Whitney Biennial Achievement. She almost signed, then read that we listed her old LA address on her card and was like totally freaked out because some of her friends, who according to Dawn, are nice girls, are living there now. I mean we got this address off the Internet. If we wanted to stalk Dawn we know where to find her. She can be found at THE FUCKING WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART where she works everyday. The stupid little docent even told her not to do anything she didn't “feel comfortable with”. Really! Like we were going to watch her TAKE A DUMP or something. REALLY!!

Next we thought Fluid Employment by Sam Lewitt was neato!! He directs ferroliquid across a magnetic plane, shaping bubbles on a darkly oiled path.
There is little explanation accompanying the work. This nice Tibetan Monk pictured below told us that the title’s significance, in lieu of Kasper and Frazier’s work, may suggest a quest for direction and connection in a world low on fiscal fuel. We just thought it was really rad because it moved and changed shapes and seemed a little toxic and dangerous. Also The Biennial Project enjoys chemicals, A LOT!!

The Biennial Project loves a 'What the Fuck Moment'. Kate Levant gave this to us. You all probably remember when in September 2009 Kate set up a Blood Drive at Zach Flreur Gallery in NYC. This was really cool but Biennial Project member Eric felt left out because he still, in the good old US of A can not donate blood because he is a man who 'sleeps' with other men’. All this even though he is HIV negative and isn't nearly as slutty in his 40s as he was in his 20s

Kate Levant scavenged the materials for her 2012 Biennial installation from a burned-down house in inner-city Detroit; an area often associated with economic distress and daunting foreclosure rates. Sheets of foil insulation lining, cardboard, and other materials found in the insect-infested ruins are transformed into a strange, visually powerful sculpture that suggests the eternal oscillation

between life and death. Each element strikes a tenuous balance between cohesion and dispersion, disintegration and growth. Describing these components as “wrecked, still trying to contend,” Levant sees this makeshift sculpture as a reflection of the landscape of Detroit, which amid its crumbling structures and faltering social systems is mutating into something new and unknown.

Kate likes cooking. She likes making soup from scratch, especially stock. She also likes making funky salads. She is quite prolific. "Kate Levant takes audience participation to a new level.” She like breaking things …for the physical act and for the result. Kate likes cleaning things up and packaging things. If she could be anywhere doing anything right now she might be in Houston with her friend Jacques sipping syrup, driving a convertible, and letting off firecrackers. Her junior year Kate dressed up like an Ewok. They’re awesome. A group of little dudes that can’t communicate but are like, “What’s up!”

The psychedelic, avant-garde rock band from Houston, Texas, RED CRAYOLA, performed on April 13th but we and any other visitor were able to talk to them live in The Whitney. They were so COOL!! The band was once paid ten dollars to stop a performance in Berkeley. When we returned in May they were still there, very tired but still speaking to strangers.

We were hoping that Kai Althoff's work would be more homoerotic sexy. We like to be a little turned on when looking at art. A half woody or semi in a museum is sort of pleasurable after all. His piece shown here looked different each time we went. Granted it was cool looking, but we once again were not part of the in crowd who knows when all the dam performances and movies were to take place at this Biennial. We live in Boston and New York is like 4 hours away (3 if Anna drives). They did give us a schedule and posted it online and everything but we can't even get to work on time let alone get to NYC to see thousands of performances.

Anyhow, Kai Althoff neither owns nor rents a studio.

Kai Althoff's paintings, installations, and mise-en-scènes reflect a struggle with complex and dialectical notions of love and hate, sexuality, and interior and exterior worlds. The German artist Kai Althoff is a second-generation Neo-Expressionist storyteller whose works constitute what might be called a scattered surrealist symphony of both youthful anomie and bohemian optimism. He is most notorious for vibrant, vaguely homoerotic scenes that could have been painted by the love child of Edouard Vuillard and Egon Schiele

We are sure Mayra Davey is a very nice lady and all but these mailed photographs seemed like something we did in art school. WE also can see them anytime we want at Boston’s ICA. We liked what famous Czech painter and sculptor Bo Petran said -"Big fucking deal”.

Lutz Bacher’s “Pipe Organ” (2009-11) evinces a distrust of modern technology via an aging Yamaha synthesizer organ tinnily played by robotic apparatus. The organ is decked out with huge tin pipes that bring to mind missile shells.

We spotted Lutz outside with her gallerist and we did not take her photo because she does not like her photo taken. Even The Biennial Project can play nice with people who play nice with us. Sometimes.

Hometown Boston boy Luther Price’s work!! He is neighbors with Anna in Revere, MA and often comes over for green tea and small town gossip, but it is a totally unfounded rumor that they are lovers. Wicked Sick!!

We spent some time with Werner Herzog’s five-screen digital projection of details from etchings by Hercules Segers; We enjoyed the visuals and cello music performed by Ernst Reijseger enough but we were more happy to rest our tired, dirty, throbbing feet and grab a five minute nap in this chamber of solitude.

Wu Tsangs installation and movie was our favorite thing at the whole biennial and she/he is not only one of our favorite artists but also one of our favorite personalities and LGBT leaders. We'd love to tell you more about the work but we're tired of writing for tonight and want to watch TV. We'll fill you in later.

XXOO, The Biennial Project