58th Venice Biennale Collateral Events Guide – Artlyst

58th Venice Biennale

Outside of the Giardini and Arsenale, the main venues for the 58th Venice Biennale, there is an overwhelming abundance of other exhibitions and events. From the historic to the contemporary and cutting edge there is something for everyone. To help you select which exhibitions are worth a visit, Artlyst is publishing its recommendations.

Official Collateral Events

Baselitz Academy
Baselitz Academy

Baselitz – Academy
Gallerie dell’Accademia
Campo della Carità, Dorsoduro 1050
Venice,
08/05/2019 – 08/09/2019

“Baselitz – Academy” is a major retrospective leading visitors through over sixty years of the German artist’s career. Georg Baselitz (Kamenz, 1938) is the first contemporary artist to be the protagonist of a retrospective at Gallery dell’Accademia: a painter, sculptor and graphic artist, he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings.

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Catalonia in Venice

Female nude decapitated, Via Favencia Barcelona municipality depot.

Catalonia in Venice_To lose your head (idols)
Arsenale Docks
11/05/2019 – 24/11/2019

Artists: Marcel Borràs with Albert Garcia-Alzórriz and the collaboration of David Bestué, Lua Coderch, Lola Lasurt, Daniela Ortiz, Perejaume, Francesc Torres

The multi-authored exhibition explores the theory of art reception and documents the complex life of public statues in our time. In a world of images, where iconoclasm, iconodulia and the transformation of aesthetic and are ways for reality and power to relate to each other, the exhibition questions the fetishism of images as living entities and encourages conversations as a way to foster human happiness, awareness and freedom.

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Förg in Venice
Palazzo Contarini Polignac
Sestiere Dorsoduro, 874, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy
11/05/2019 — 23/08/2019

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is collaborating with the artist estate on an exhibition of works by Gunther Forg (I9S2-20I 3) at the historic Palazzo Contarini Polignac in Venice. It follows on from the survey show, ‘Gunther Forg: A Fragile Beauty’, which took place in Dallas in 2008, and brings together aver 30 pieces from the artist’s multidisciplinary practice- focusing on his paintings and lesser-known sculptural work- to reflect on the expansive and intuitive methods of this manifold, intellectual artist.

Future Generation Art Prize Venice 2019
Future Generation Art Prize Venice 2019

Future Generation Art Prize 2019 @ Venice
Palazzo Ca’ Tron
San Croce, 1957, 30135 Venezia VE, Italy

11/05/2019 — 18/08/2019

The Future Generation Art Prize is a biannual global contemporary art prize to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists. Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009, the Prize supported the artistic development and production of new works of over 84 artists in exhibitions at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv and as official collateral events at the Venice Biennale in 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2019.

Charlotte Prodger Venice + Scotland
Charlotte Prodger

Scotland + Venice presents Charlotte Prodger
Arsenale Docks, S. Pietro di Castello, Castello 40,
Venice, 30122
11/05/2019 – 24/11/2019

Charlotte Prodger, winner of the Turner Prize 2018, presents a new single-channel video arisen from her investigation in the theme of “queer wilderness” and will be exhibited in a meticulously conceived installation commissioned by Scotland + Venice, a partnership between Creative Scotland, British Council Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland.

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Sean Edwards, Wales in Venice
Sean Edwards, Wales in Venice

Wales in Venice: Sean Edwards
Chiesa di Santa Maria Ausiliatrice
Fondamenta San Gioacchin Castello, 450
Venice, 30122
11/05/2019 – 24/11/2019

Edwards’ exhibition, a poetic inquiry into place, politics and class, intertwined with personal histories, is the artist’s first major presentation at an international biennale. Known for his sculptural approach to the every day, Edwards often begins with seemingly unrelated elements linked by autobiographical and cultural connections. Edwards’ new body of work includes sculpture, film, prints, Welsh quilts and a live daily radio broadcast, and takes its starting point from the artist’s experience of growing up on a council estate in Cardiff in the 1980s.

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THE SPARK IS YOU: Parasol unit in Venice
THE SPARK IS YOU: Parasol unit in Venice

THE SPARK IS YOU: Parasol unit in Venice
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia

Sestiere di S. Marco, 2810, 30124 Venezia VE,
9 May – 23 November 2019

In celebration of its 15th anniversary, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art presents, through a prism of classical Persian poetry, an exhibition of works by nine contemporary Iranian artists.

Morteza Ahmadvand | Nazgol Ansarinia | Siah Armajani | Mitra Farahani
Sahand Hesamiyan | Y.Z. Kami | Farideh Lashai | Koushna Navabi | Navid Nuur

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Philippe Parreno
Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia,
Calle del Ridotto 1353
San Marco
Venice, 30124
11 May – 24 November

The Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia is displaying a whole new installation by French artist Philippe Parreno. The new installation continues this story and the enduring development of the microorganisms.
With its new futuristic piece, Parreno creates an experience where the memory of the past comes together in a disruptive temporality with the present and future, evoking the parallel realities dear to the artist. The familiar markers of perception are annihilated in favour of a stimulating process of inventing new ways of understanding, defying rational categories and the established order.

Other Exhibitions

Edmund de Waal, Psalm
Edmund de Waal, Psalm

Edmund de Waal, psalm

Canton Scuola Synagogue, Calle Orto, 1191, 30121 Venezia VE,

Ateneo Veneto, 30100 Venice,

7 May – 29 September 2019

British artist and author, Edmund de Waal will be the first contemporary artist to create a major work for the Ghetto in Venice which will be unveiled during the preview week of the Venice Biennale, opening on 7th May 2019.
The exhibition is called psalm and will be in two parts.

The first is located in the Canton Scuola, the beautiful 16th-century synagogue in the Ghetto Nuovo, which is now part of the Jewish Museum. New installations of porcelain, marble and gold will reflect the literary and musical heritage of this extraordinary place. For the first time, the Women’s Gallery within the synagogue will hold contemporary art. The intention is to animate spaces that are little known and little understood by visitors to the Biennale and to bring new audiences into the Ghetto.

The second part of the work will be a pavilion based at the Ateneo Veneto, the fifteenth-century building near the Fenice Opera House that has been an historic centre for cultural debate in Venice. Here, Edmund de Waal is constructing a small building within the main space that will house 2000 books by exiled writers, from Ovid to the present day.

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Jean Dubuffet and Venice
Jean Dubuffet and Venice

Jean Dubuffet and Venice
Palazzo Franchetti,
S. Marco, 2847
Venice, 30124
10 May – 20 October 2019
A strong relationship connects one of the most important French artists of the postwar period, Jean Dubuffet, to the city of Venice. This show, curated by Sophie Webel and Frédéric Jaeger, intends to celebrate and remember the importance of two famous exhibitions that, taking place in Venice, marked the path of the artist. Dubuffet chose Venice twice in order to present his more recent works for the first time: at Palazzo Grassi in 1964 and at the French Pavilion at Biennale of 1984.

Through the recall of the two historical Venetian exhibitions mentioned above, the show at Palazzo Franchetti presents the three most important series of Dubuffet’s work: from the Célébration du sol to Hourloupe and then Mires.

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Luc Tuymans Palazzon Grassi
Luc Tuymans Palazzon Grassi

Luc Tuymans: La Pelle
Palazzo Grassi
Campo San Samuele 3231
Venice, 30124
24/03/2019 – 01/06/2020

This will be Luc Tuymans’ first personal exhibition in Italy. Curated by Caroline Bourgeois in collaboration with the artist (Mortsel, Belgium, 1958), the show is entitled ‘La Pelle’, after Curzio Malaparte’s 1949 novel. It includes over 80 works from the Pinault Collection, international museums and private collections, and focuses on the artist’s paintings from 1986 to today.

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Arshile Gorky, Ca' Pesaro
Arshile Gorky, Ca’ Pesaro

Arshile Gorky: 1904 – 1948
Ca’ Pesaro- International Gallery of Modern Art
Santa Croce 2076, Venice, Italy
09/05/2019 – 22/09/2019

A major exhibition of the work of Arshile Gorky, the first exhibition in Italy of this celebrated and influential figure of 20th Century American Art. Presented as a comprehensive retrospective survey, this exhibition will examine the stages of Gorky’s remarkable career from his earliest works during the 1920s, where his interrogation of Cézanne’s compositions permeated his approach to painting, through to the culmination of his autodidactic study of modern masters and movements, to the point where the elements from these various stimuli explicitly coalesced into Gorky’s singular and powerful vision.

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Jean Arp Peggy Guggenheim Museum
Jean Arp Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Jean Arp: The Nature of Arp
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Dorsoduro 701
Venice, 30124
13/04/2019 – 02/09/2019

The exhibition proposes a suggestive and long-awaited reading of the artistic production of the French-German artist Jean (Hans) Arp (1886–1966), whose experimental approach to the creation and radical rethinking of traditional art forms made him one of the artists most influential of the twentieth century. During a career spanning over six decades, Arp produced a body of high-impact works in multiple materials and formats. Arp was one of the founders of the Dada movement and pioneer of abstraction, he developed a vocabulary of organic forms that move fluidly between abstraction and representation and quickly became a reference point for several generations of artists. The exhibition is organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center of Dallas, the first exhibition venue of the exhibition.

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Rothko in Lampedusa
11 May – 24 November 2019
Palazzo Querini
Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2691

Rothko in Lampedusa is an independent organised by UNHCR taking place during the 58th Venice Biennale and curated by Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta. The exhibition reflects upon the migrant crisis utilising a poignant artistic language. The common thread weaving throughout the exhibition is Mark Rothko, the artist who escaped from the repressive Soviet regime in the beginning of the 20th century. If this particular refugee had not been able to explore his artistic potential in his host country, we would not have his extraordinary artworks today. So among the indefinite number of today’s refugees, could there be a Rothko of the 21st century?

The exhibition, therefore, intends to create a dialogue between established contemporary artists and six younger refugee artists, who will be welcomed and hosted in the city of Venice. This artist in residency programme is in partnership with the island of San Servolo. Acclaimed international artists like Ai Weiwei, Dihn Q. Lê, Nalini Malani, Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Christian Boltanski, Artur Żmijewski, Richard Mosse, and Adel Abdessemed will play a pivotal role in presenting refugees as not societal burdens but valued individuals.

Body As Home
Body As Home

BODY AS HOME
Giudecca Art District

The Giudecca Art District will launch at the 2019 Venice Biennale and will encompass 11 art galleries and art spaces and 3 national pavilions including Estonia, Iceland and Nigeria as well as launching a new contemporary art space Giudecca Art District Gallery and Garden. Opening in May over 60 artists from 30 countries will be included in 20 exhibitions on the island for the launch of the art district. Art spaces including the newly established Giudecca Art District Gallery and Garden will be central to the Giudecca Art District as well as an additional ten established art galleries and spaces including Studiolacitta, Chiesa delle Zitelle, Starak Foundation, Spazio Bullo, Spazio Raunich and Spazio Silos with five more art galleries to be announced next month.

While over 60 artists will be exhibited as part of the international launch of the Giudecca Art District, Body as Home will be the flagship installation for the launch of GAD and a focal point for this new dedicated space for independent contemporary art.
Curated by Miguel Mallol, ‘Body as Home’ is a three-channel film presented in tryptic that documents a journey of self-discovery, identity, migration and a search for the meaning of home. Filmed in 4 different cities; Cape Town, London, New York and Warsaw, ‘Body as Home’ captures 3 protagonists in each city – a local, a visitor and the filmmaker herself in order to explore the concept of home in regard to geographical location, one’s placement within society, and personal identity. The film explores how notions of physical selfhood and our sense of home overlap. ‘Body as Home’ looks to address the relationship between human physicality, sexuality and identity and urge viewers to accept and feel at home in their own bodies.

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Sean Scully
Sean Scully, Madonna Triptych (one panel of three), 2018

Sean Scully
Abbey San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
11 May – 13 October 2019

Commissioned by the monks at San Giorgio, Sean Scully will present a series of new works exhibited alongside pieces from his private collection, in and around the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. The exhibition will be the first time Scully has worked with the monks of San Giorgio Maggiore, and will mark a shift away from his abstract works towards a more figurative aesthetic. Works include large-scale new sculptures, drawings, and watercolour works directly inspired by the monks’ Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore, and content from a new illustrated manuscript, handmade by the monks and worked on by Sean over the past eight months.

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Alive in the Universe
Lol Sargent, PROCREATION, Adam and Eve

ALIVE in the UNIVERSE
Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Calle de la Racheta 3764, Cannaregio, 30121, Venezia VE, Italy.
May 8 – June 4th.
The exhibition presents 28 artists over 28 days at the Venice Biennale from May 8 – June 4th. These international and emerging artists express how it feels to be alive in the universe through video, performance and installation. Plus, over 200 one minute art-films from around the world add instant moments of life in the universe.
International artists include Sarah Lucas and Julian Simmons, Issam Kourbaj, Maggi Hambling, Nigel Hall RA, Abigail Lane, Matthew Darbyshire, and Ermias Kifleyesus

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Diversity for Peace
Diversity for Peace

Diversity for Peace!

The Procuratie Vecchie 139-153, Piazza San Marco, ground floor and first floor
Wednesday May 8th – Sunday November 24th 2019 /

‘Diversity for Peace!’ seeks to explore the stories behind each artist and their work fusing art and life as we challenge the notion of normality. Located in Piazza San Marco, Venice, the exhibition hopes to create a hub of local and global cultural exchange by using art to encourage critical thought and tolerance. The exhibition will showcase many new commissioned pieces from internationally renowned artists selected from countries across the globe, each bringing their own unique personal experience and cultural background, contributing to the central theme of diversity.

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Hansel and Gretel White Traces in Search of Your Self
PALAZZO BONVICINI
CALLE AGNELLO –2161/A SANTA CROCE 30135 VENICE
– between Ponte dell’Agnello and Ca’Bonvicini –
May 11th November 24th
An exhibition that takes the shape of a symbolic journey along the charming rooms of Palazzo Bonvicini, in the heart of Venice. The three artists, Isao, Didier Guillon and Silvano Rubino, start from their personal memories, then give space to their creativity with installations that guide the visitors through the steps of the story: the home, the forest, the trap, the return. Finally, they sketch a vision of the future that opens up once the beginning and the end have closed the loop.

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Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler, Open Wall 1953

Helen Frankenthaler: Pittura/Panorama
Palazzo Grimani
Castello, Ramo Grimani 4858
Venice, 30124
07/05/2019 — 17/11/2019

This exhibition is the first presentation of Helen Frankenthaler’s work in Venice since its appearance in 1966 at the American Pavilion of the 33rd Venice Biennale. Organized by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and Venetian Heritage, in association with Gagosian, the exhibition covers a forty-year span of Frankenthaler’s career from the early 1950s to her richly atmospheric canvases of the early 1990s. It features fourteen panoramic paintings, all from the collection of the Foundation. Frankenthaler was influenced in her use of colour by the great Venetian artists of the 1500s, making the venue particularly appropriate for this exhibition.

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Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis
Fondazione Prada, Venice
Santa Croce 2215
Venice, 30123
11/05/2019 — 24/11/2019

“Jannis Kounellis”, curated by Germano Celant, is the major retrospective dedicated to the artist following his death in 2017. Developed in collaboration with Archivio Kounellis, the project brings together more 60 works from 1959 to 2015, from both Italian and international museums, as well as from important private collections both in Italy and abroad. The show explores the artistic and exhibition history of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus 1936 – Rome 2017), establishing a dialogue between his works and the eighteenth-century spaces of Ca’ Corner della Regina.

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Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II
Ocean Space
Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Campo San Lorenzo, Castello
Venice, 30122
24/03/2019 — 29/09/2019
TBA21–Academy presents a major new commission and research project by pioneering video and performance artist artist Joan Jonas focused on the biodiversity of the seas. The installation launches the first phase of Ocean Space, a new collaborative platform for cross-disciplinary research, discovery, and innovation supporting ocean stewardship and conservation, in the newly restored, historic Church of San Lorenzo.

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Miniscule Venice
Miniscule Venice

Miniscule Venice

Fondamenta Sant’Anna 996 Castello 30122, Venezia
Italia
11/05/2019 — 21/07/2019
Curated by Vanya Balogh
In Association with Cross Lane Projects
Miniscule Venice could be regarded as a bijou sociological experiment: over 100 international artists have taken up the invitation to create and exhibit a diminutive art object of any genre or media, but with a simple proviso: maximum size of the work is that of a common matchbox. This diverse exhibition, curated and devised by artist Vanya Balogh presents a set of carefully considered, imaginative but seriously tiny, fragile artworks – an exquisite mass of breeding minisculism, making it by far a biggest smallest show at 58th Venice Biennale. Here we will find a toy-box destruction derby of high concept in abject competition, a kaleidoscope cross-cut of current making and thinking but one set in an equal arena, although admittedly it may be biased towards the “less is more” camp.

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Void Empire II
Void Empire II

EMPIRE II – VOID
Curated by Vanya Balogh

Void is a spontaneous, durational event taking place across the city of Venice during the opening days of 58th Biennale. It is a last and conclusive event in the series of Empire II exhibitions and screenings, launched in 2017 during 57th Biennale. After its recent showing at Maco, Oaxaca, under the title “ After Extinction “, this ephemeral final adaptation of the project will feature artists walk & wonder across the many streets, corners and different squares of Venice to merge the projections with the architecture and its surroundings. We will see selection of works specially produced, collated and edited for this occasion, introducing VOID as the final conceptual point of EMPIRE II.

Screening times;
8th / 9th / 10th May 2019
from 11pm until 4am nightly //

Locations points: San Marco / Castello / Cannareggio / Dorsoduro / San Polo & Santa Croce

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Renata Morales and Marina Abramovic
Renata Morales and Marina Abramovic

Renata Morales and Marina Abramovic
8 May – 6 July 2019
Ca’ Rezzonico
Dorsoduro 3136

Phi is a leading arts and culture organization in Montreal dedicated to looking at the evolving way new generations consume culture by bringing outstanding immersive experiences to broad audiences through their exploration of art and technology. Running in parallel to the 58th Venice Biennale, Phi will look to invade the city of Venice through the multi-disciplinary work of two leading female artists in the setting of the Palazzo Ca’ Rezzonico (opposite Palazzo Grassi).

Mexican mixed-media artist, Renata Morales’ will present Invasor, the culmination of a two year residency with Phi Centre in Montreal. Her large ceramic sculptures will be placed a monochromatic partial recreation of Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico. The dystopian universe that Renata has created is one of opposites. Her composite figures of assembled media challenge our perceptions of texture, touch, beauty, solace and violence.

Marina Abramović’s leading virtual reality piece, Rising, produced in collaboration with Acute Art, addresses the effects of climate change by transporting viewers to witness rising sea levels. Participants will enter an intimate virtual space, where they come face-to-face with the artist and then find themselves surrounded by melting polar ice caps.

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Martin Brown
Martin Brown, Isola di San Michele, Venice 2016

MARTIN BROWN VENEZIA/VEDUTA/CONTEMPORANEA
29th April—15th May 2019
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica
Cannaregio 1798, 30121, Venezia

Martin Brown’s paintings deal primarily with the built environment, especially urban spaces. Brown draws on the history
of painting in the Western tradition to explore ideas of memory and perception as they relate to the architecture and
topography of modern cities
Venezia/Veduta/Contemporanea, presents a series of paintings that are a contemporary commentary on the
historical painting style ‘veduta’, through depictions of Venice that comment directly on the history of painting.

The Wait ArtBAB
Hala Kaiksow, The Wait, ArtBAB

The Wait: Hasan Hujairi, Ghada Khunji, ‘Bahraini Danish’, Mariam Al Noaimi, Nasser Al Yousif and Hala Kaiksow.

7-12 May 2019

Arsenale Nord – Tesa 113

In a sign of the growing international interest in Bahraini art nurtured by the successful ArtBAB interaction, the works of seven Bahraini artists will be exhibited.

Top Photo: P C Robinson © Artlyst 2019

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The 58th International Art ExhibitionMay You Live In Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff,  11th May-24 November 2019 at the Giardini and Arsenale venues, Venice, Italy

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