Venice Biennale 2015 – Overview
Michelle and I have just returned from a wonderful vacation in Italy. We began our trip in Venice, and we took in the 2015 Venice Biennale – arguably the most prestigious fine art exhibition in the world.
Over the course of two days, we visited the Arsenale and il Giardini exhibition spaces and for the remainder of our stay, we were able to visit a few of the satellite spaces dotted around the city.
The exhibition is enormous, to put it mildly. This year, there are 136 artist’s work displayed in several venues. The Arsenale venue is the former military grounds of Venice, and the lengthy main hall is eight consecutive rooms under an ancient wood beamed roof. Modern lighting has been added to this and the other buildings of this section for the exhibition. Il Giardini was a surprise for me, as I always envisioned this venue to be open air. The Gardens actually house several permanent buildings for the various participating countries and art is exhibited inside them. There are also several exhibition spaces dotted throughout Venice, in churches, villas, palazzos, piazzas and piazzettas.
Almost one third of the Biennale is video installations, about another third is conceptual art and a third is discrete art. This made our visit much more manageable, as we do not like video installations and little conceptual art!
Above are two views inside the Arsenale and below is the Canada pavilion in il Giardini.
In succeeding posts, I’ll talk about some of the pieces that interested Michelle and I most.
