Despite its bizarre anticontemporary ethos, Venice did see some novelty this year. One is the confidence of the marketing object to claim the attention of a well-made artwork. Saudi Arabia’s desert art project Wadi AlFan, for example, filled a palazzo with seductive landscapes in immersive video and a list of distinguished artists to boot. The purpose of this trade expo popup would be easy to miss were it not for Iwona Blazwick’s sales pitch voiceover.
A more worrying trope is the artwork that looks good but on reflection isn’t. Pakui Hardware’s sculptures of bodily organs and strands of the nervous system deploy a familiar, if not clichéd language or red glass and metal. Suspended on a polished steel scaffold which fills the interior of a centuries-old church, these structures overplay their strength yet fail to correspond with the chapel’s native iconography.
The same architect’s folly encases the late Rožanskaité’s paintings in more glass and steel, turning them into tributaries to the show’s vague transhumanism. The painter’s ability to abstract from the human body but remain specifically close to it far exceeds these confines. The heart-of-glass trinkets are a deceptive distraction. Seeing the exhibition at the pace of a Venice day tourist, however, might leave one believing the opposite.
