Venice: Sheila Hicks at Arsenale

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Not quite sure if this counts as the rocks and props display systems of which we had mentioned, but there is that biomorphic gesture, the lumpen here like minimalist plushies, like muppets melted into pellets, physical round things mirroring our jelly prone bodies in sweaters, set against the display which generally euphemizes the body to appeal the eyes rather than spatial and proprioception of big soft rocks, Hicksian materiality in piles.


See too: Venice so far, Continuing Venice

Continuing Venice

(Venice: Kishio Suga at Arsenale)

Continuing from here. We've got more rocks propped. Though Suga has been propping potato objects for some time now, the rocks and sticks and lumpen things always seeming made to stand under pressure, like they're having a real rough go maintaining their uprightness. Their sort of dumb monumentality always human scaled. It makes them endearing. The lumpen always resembling us, or our eggs.


see too: Venice so far.

Venice: Anne Imhof at German Pavilion

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It's hard to watch bodies adopt ad campaigns. If Imhof's performances seem made for the documentation that echo them it's because they have our beautiful youth retension this conformity to the fashion that will transmit them. Move behind the glass of magazine pages. Identity is performance, seeing its most theatrical version, fashion, as art performance looking like a fashion shoot, is a nightmare. All of youth's beauty is wasted, by everyone, but now you can watch it be caged live in the clothing of another.


See too: Tony Conrad's Glass