Venice Works

Just back from the Venice biennale, which was nothing new but lots of nice and some excellent. Here's a mix of faces and places and things that grabbed my very short attention:

The impossible to photograph but utterly fantabulous Canadian pavilion by David Altmejd, full of business men corpses with owl heads out of whose wounds fly smaller birds and golden chains and moss grows on their knees while other body parts turn into mirror crystals,and the men turn into werewolves and the installation seems to engulf the pavilion itself, turning everything into a magically gay forest nightmare disco funeral.

Also fabulous and out of control was the German pavilion by Iza Genzken, full of venetian samsonite cat poster dead ninja turtle silver spray paint and mirrors too.yes
couldnt resist a self portrait, because I waited 45 minutes to get in, so I really had to take a picture of everything
Genzken
and Genzken
and Genzken too all the while Angelo was sleeping with the winged lion of Venice that fell off it's pedestal, Sylvia danced around and Christodoulos studied carefully
comparing foldable wayfarers with Marina FokidisR.I.P. Jason Rhoadesboxes that fell on boxes in the curiously interesting Australian pavilion by Daniel von Sturmer, and a great great title: The Object of ThingsI cant remember the name of this artist at Arsenale, but he was born in 1920
and makes these apocalyptic invisible cities hanging rocks

walking around exhausted we passed by the best fence in Venice

the great "Hamster Wheel" where Gelitin caused havoc and terrified the police with their nakedness, and their "back in 5 minutes" video
and a rabbit with a flower on it's head checking out the chaosumm this
and Paola Pivi's lovely yellow feather polar bear
and Kostis Velonis going up some amazing stairs

the typical chandelier in our room in Dorsodurothe fantastic animation in the Russian pavilion

the fabulous Grotto on Garibaldi street
anarchy and ivy
sometimes hardware looks like art too

typical venetian skyline of tourists and boats and pink street lamps and antennae and palazzos and clouds
and of course the completely amazing Greek pavilion by Nikos Alexiou, a monastic hallucination on the floor of Iviron Monastery, overlaying paper cuts with projections with hanging plastic strings and models of tables on piles of papers and triangles and patterns
and amazing artists' studio installation where the table becomes the world
fragile paper labyrinths become the byzantine sky of complexity
that magically reappears in a hole on a building on the beach in Lido