Photos by Ashley "Holiday" Eaton

June 5, 2009

By Bryson Strauss

VENEZIA -  On Friday June 5, 2009, the  53^rd Biennale opened to private audiences with a bang that rivaled the World Series.   Set among the gorgeous alleyways and waterways of Venice, art poured out of every crevice as throngs of artists, collectors, consultants, gallerists, and writers flooded the streets headed for the Arsenale and Giardini, where countries from around the world curated their best artistic talent.

To set the scene, the two main venues are the Arsenale and the Giardini.  Holiday and I started at the Arsenale, which is the old armory and boatyard built in the thirteen hundreds consisting of no less than 20 contiguous spaces featuring fifty-foot ceilings and stretching half the length of a football field each.  The entire structure is the shape of a reverse “L” and one enters near the Grand Canal and traverses almost the entire island moving from one exhibit to the next.

Within the controlled environment of Arsenale exhibition spaces, the journey is a sensory overload of sight, sound, and touch.  While the spaces are called pavilions, the distinction between each section is loose, emphasizing both the unique cultural language of the exhibiting countries and the international cross-cultural nature of art itself.

Since such huge spaces naturally lend themselves to huge artwork, almost all of the exhibits involved large-scale environmental installations.  Thus, as one moved through the show, he or she became a participant in the artwork and was usually completely surrounded by the installation.  The effect was hypnotizing.

On the first day, while scrambling for our press passes, we met up with Tiffiny Lendrum (of Lendrum Fine Art in L.A.) and made our way straight to Pae White’s (from Pasadena, CA) incredible bird installation, which was a separate project from the American Pavilion.  The “performance” was scheduled for 2 PM and Holiday and I arrived just as things were getting underway.  In less than two weeks, Pae had woven an entire ceiling of crisscrossing multi-colored string that resembled a laser light show and that hung about halfway down from the actual ceiling of the pavilion.  Then, with a walkway down the center, she created long, ornate, hanging sculptures and chandeliers out of birdseed and resins.  Along each side of the space ran what seemed like giant birdcages of steel and wood.

The sound of the birds could be heard from outside the building and as we entered, their calls sometimes drowned out the voices inside.  The feeling was if we were in the cage surrounded by birds. But as we moved through the exhibit, no birds were to be seen and yet the calls were clearly organic, not recorded. They could have been hiding behind barriers, or walls, and maybe it was just one or two after all.

Finally, a tourist with a tan vest taking pictures of the birdseed chandelier appeared to linger curiously long.  Convinced a bird was calling from within the chandelier, he pointed his camera and others gathered around to search for the source of the call.

Pae finally gave it up, explaining that the lingering “tourists,” were actually traditional Italian bird callers from countryside near Venice.  It was fantastic.

That night the sea rose above the seawalls and the streets of Venice flooded……