Spanish Pavilion, Spain at Venice Biennale of Art - Giardini, Castello - City of Venice
Exhibition in progress from April 23rd to November 27th 2022
The 59th Biennale Arte will open to the public on 23 April. But on the 20th, 21st and 22nd there will be the various openings and collateral events that always suddenly animate the Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place on the day of the opening to the public.
The title of the 59th edition of the Biennale d'Arte is Il Latte dei Sogni that means The Milk of Dreams.
The invited artists are 213 from 58 countries. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 the first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 the works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
In all, 80 nations will participate in the Venice Biennale in the pavilions at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in the historic center of Venice.
Go to the page of the 59th Venice Art Biennale
Spanish Pavilion, Spain at 59th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion is Correción.
Artists: Ignasi Aballí.
Curators: Bea Espejo.
Commissioner: Organizzato dal Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación de España. AECID Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo e co-organizzato da Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).
Seat: Spanish Pavilion, Giardini - Venice
Press Release of Spanish Pavilion
Correction is the project presented by artist Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) for the Pavilion of
Spain at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Bea Espejo.
Aballí’s proposal consists of two actions: a 1:1 scale architectural intervention of the pavilion
and the publication of six guides. Both actions were conceived with the idea of correcting
the apparent errors the artist found during his research on the physiognomy of the pavilion
and the city of Venice. First, Aballí corrects the layout of the Spanish building by rotating
the whole structure by ten degrees, thus aligning it with the neighboring pavilions in the
Giardini. With the second action, he corrects the generally accepted idea of a tourist guide
to this Italian city.
Correction arises from an apparent error that Ignasi Aballí noticed when he looked at the
blueprints for the Spanish Pavilion with respect to its location in the Giardini of La Biennale di
Venezia. They reveal that the building appears slightly displaced compared to the neighboring
pavilions of the Netherlands and Belgium. Moreover, there is a disturbing proximity with the
latter, where the walls of both pavilions seem to touch. Based on this, Aballí embraces the
hypothesis that the current location of the Spanish Pavilion is an error and poses the question,
what would happen if we moved the pavilion to align it with the rest of the adjacent buildings,
and what changes would that modification imply?
As a consequence, Correction “rebuilds” the interior of the Spanish Pavilion by rotating it ten
degrees to align it with the neighboring buildings. An intervention of the building’s architecture
that upends the memory in spatial terms and modifies the exhibition space, its location in the
Giardini and its relationship with the city itself. The visitor will find a reconsidered space in
which the original walls, which have not been touched or manipulated, but converted into disused
material, will be mixed with the new walls resulting from the ten-degree “turn” made by the artist.
Parallel to the rotating of the pavilion, the project is completed with the publication of six books
about Venice that aim to correct what we would normally understand to be a tourist guide to the
city. The artist identifies another apparent error in relation to the city: Venice is claimed to be
one of the most visited cities in the world and, at the same time, faces serious problems due
to mass tourism, which puts it on the brink of collapse. This contradiction, added to the global
pandemic, which has led the city to be “erroneously” empty, as if that were an anomaly, leads
the artist to look at it from another perspective: a Venice that slows down the everyday tourist’s
quick visit to pause at everything central to the artistic practice of Ignasi Aballí.
The six free guides have been distributed at different points in La Biennale di Venezia and
throughout the city. There is also a map with information on the location of each of the guides,
which can be picked up at the Spanish Pavilion.
The themes of the guides revolve around:
Almost. A conceptual tour through the pavilion, the Biennale or the city. It is about
the impossibility of retaining a definitive meaning and not taking anything for granted.
Inventory. A walk through the streets observing the different shades of the walls. Venice,
through the color of its houses.
Stories. Slides of Venice compiled by Aballí showing works of art, other cities and other
trips, that appear discolored by the sun in his studio. They have been gathered in this
volume to discuss the visual saturation that both the city and La Biennale di Venezia
itself can cause.
Panorama. Venice seen in its details and in a myriad of worthless materials susceptible
of being works of art. It is a story about absence.
Horizons. Landscapes of skies and seas that merge into the Venetian horizon extracted
from newspaper clippings. The sky as a great, unmeasurable void, and the sea as an
unreachable crossing.
Landscape. Texts that classify concepts and atmospheric phenomena. The probable,
but not impossible, in a single image showing the invisible side of the landscape.
The architectural work inside the Spanish Pavilion was done in collaboration with MAIO Architects,
a studio located in Barcelona made up of María Charneco, Alfredo Lérida, Guillermo López,
and Anna Puigjaner. The artist collaborated with Caniche Editorial for the publication of the
new guides to the city.
Correction is completed with the publication of a catalog that includes a conversation between
Manuel Borja-Villel, Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and Ignasi
Aballí and texts by curator Ruth Estévez, Uruguayan artist Alejandro Cesarco, Belgian curator
and editor Moritz Küng, and Bea Espejo, curator of the project.
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except May 13, September 2, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.5218704
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale
of Venice |
