![]() JOHANNESBURG BIENNALE
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Interior of the Electric Workshop
Coco Fusco holds up a Biennale
Penny Siopis
ChoDuck-Hyun
ChoDuck-Hyun
ChoDuck-Hyun
Pepon Osorio
Pepon Osorio
Kay Hassan |
This was the flagship show of the Biennale, curated by artistic director Okwui Enwezor in tandem with Octavio Zaya and located in the extraordinary space of the Electric Workshop with its heavy old industrial architecture and vast volumes. Given that the theme of the Biennale was 'Trade Routes: History and Geography', the curation was remarkably tight, with nearly every piece harking back in some way to the selling of goods, land or people, and the dispossession and movement caused by these timeless global activities. For example, the ordeal of producing the right papers to allow one access to a country was experienced by early visitors to the Biennale, who found they had to be photographed and have their particulars entered in a small blue 'Reference Book' to be examined by uniformed doormen before they were permitted to enter the exhibition space. This ritual was a performance piece by American artist Coco Fusco, and although the passbook overtones seemed particularly apt for an audience in South Africa, Fusco has apparently carried out the same performance elsewhere in the world. On opening night, the crush was such that some visitors found themselves queueing for 40 minutes to get a reference book, an inconvenience that annoyed some considerably. South African artist Penny Siopis constructed a small cinema with red walls, and red plush seats borrowed from the Market Theatre for viewers to enjoy her video My Lovely Day - (her father was involved in the cinema business). Old home movie footage taken by the artist's mother and other family members was the source material for the piece, an endearing story of how the family decided to move from Greece to better their fortunes, and what they found in Africa. There is plenty of cavorting by the young Siopis and her siblings, the colour is a strange reddish yellow, and the story moves along by means of subtitles representing the caustic voice of Siopis's grandmother, with remembered dialogue and quotes from old letters. Asimilar theme of movement is tackled by Mexican artist Teresa Serrano, with her 3-screen vido projection entitled The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (1997). In a series of long shots and close-ups, the hypnotic and nervous flutterings of clouds of butterflies cross-dissolve into crowds of people - refugees, immigrants, illegal workers maybe - endlessly on the move. Directly addressing the theme, Korean ChoDuck-Hyun presented Trade Route - Our Theory of the 20th Century - six immaculately rendered portraits in conte crayon on canvas, displayed in the boxes in which they were sent, still with the calico wrappings at their base, one not even unwrapped. Each portrait had a relationship to the theme: the neatly dressed woman clutching a handbag was a 'comfort woman' - forced to sexually serve the Japanese masters during World War II. And then there is Pepon Osorio's masterly double video piece - two adjoining rooms are a prison cell and a teenager's wildly colourful bedroom, full of the status symbols of his peers. We are looking at the living spaces of a Hispanic father and his son. On the walls of the rooms, the heads of each in turn are projected, and we are able to follow a conversation between the two. Apparently this was a real-life situation, lending even more poignancy to this fine work. Shebeen, Kay Hassan's evocative installation, appeared at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis earlier this year. Shebeens are small drinking lounges, an integral part of South African life, a meeting point for locals and travellers alike. In the Electric Workshop, Hassan's Shebeen was located in a dark room complete with sofas, stacks of cases of Castle, and on the walls, slide projections of local shebeen scenes. On opening night, definitely the most popular place to hang out. This brief discussion has covered only six of eighty exhibits. There have been comments that 'Alternating Currents' is too heavy on video - too much having to disappear into a black box and concentrate, not enough materiality - but for those willing to give their attention, the rewards of this show are great.
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A desk in Xu Bing's classroom
Young-Jin Kim
Dennis Oppenheim |
Another rich show, curated with sharp intelligence by Yu Yeon Kim, with many high points. 'Transversions' read the curatorial statement, 'is an attempt to create a broad interface to decipher and reflect the interweave of contemporary experience'.. and 'a portrait of the reinvention of our cultures'. Chinese artist Xu Bing has made his reputation with work that questions the cultural legacy of the past, staging massive installations of important looking scrolls covered with thousands of black ink characters which to the Western eye look Chinese - but in fact are meaningless, the invention of the artist. In the MuseumAfrica, Xu Bing sets up a classroom situation - visitors are able to sit down at desks, pick up a bamboo brush, load it with ink, and practice the controlled hand and arm movements needed to produce beautiful calligraphy. A closer look at the characters in the exercise books provided for copying, however, will give students a surprise. Young-Jin Kim of Korea produced an elegant and quirky piece involving projectors, water, pumps and compressors. Droplets sprayed by an operator on to a tiny screen are magnified to room size, providing endlessly changing patterns and subtle colourations. And upstairs, in that classic (1971) video reflection on human consumption, American artist Dennis Oppenheim ceaselessly stuffs an outsize gingerbread man into his mouth. Local artists include William Kentridge, Minnette Vari, and Stephen Hobbs. |
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Huang Yong Ping |
Hong Kong Etc at the Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery Given that this space with its disparate and distracting elements is not an easy one to work with, Hou Hanru's show still did not seem to have the coherence one would have liked to have seen. Perhaps the global statement in which the shifting position of Hong Kong was taken as a metaphor for contemporary culture was too big a theme for the space, and a sharper, more narrowly focussed approach would have been more effective. Nonetheless, there are some interesting contributions, and the show should be visited. |
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Other Biennale show listings:
'Important and Exportant' curated by Gerardo Mosquero at the Johannesburg Art Gallery Notes on these shows appeared in Artthrob in October, and reviews and pictures will be added to this site shortly. | |
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