An intriguing concept: how to create an art exhibition about the inability to communicate? That is what curator Rachel Valinsky has set out to do in Itself Not So, the current group show at Lisa Cooley on the Lower East Side, and for the most part, the selection she has made neatly vaults past the inherent paradox of the proposition.
Fia Backström
Seeing Through the Crowds at the 2011 Venice Biennale Part I: The Giardini and Pavilions
Editor’s Note: Peter Dobey published a series of photo essays (1, 2, 3) about this year’s Venice Biennale at the beginning of June. This is a long-form essay (to be published in three parts) that explores the work at the Biennale.
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PARIS — It is difficult to write about Venice, just like it is difficult to really SEE Venice. Individual experiences of art fade away into the oversaturation that is the Venice Biennale in the same way the city of Venice is sinking into the Adriatic. There is the ontological experience of Venice and the problem of one’s ability to encounter it. Then there is the physical impossibility to see everything the Biennale offers you and all the things it doesn’t, especially when in Italy.
Photos from the 54th Venice Biennale, Part 2
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the François Pinault Foundation, the French, Haitian, Danish, Swedish, Swiss and the Venezuelan pavilions.