As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, let’s keep on looking at colours inspired by the works currently showcased at the Venice Biennale.
The first example in this post is Pipilotti Rist. The artist – who featured a while back in this blog in connection with her film "Pepperminta" – is exhibiting at the Biennale a three-screen installation entitled “Non voglio tornare indietro” in which she projects on three replicas of Venetian paintings her iconic moving images in acid colours, including fish, fireworks, doctors and the insides of human bodies.
The bright hallucinating shades used by Pipilotti Rist may not be for the fainthearted, but they definitely have a special mesmerising quality about them.
The second example of inspiring colours is instead dedicated to people who are into pastel nuances and refers to the installation, curated by Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, by 2011 Turner Prize nominee Karla Black at the Scottish Pavilion, Palazzo Pisani (Calle de le Erbe 6103, Cannaregio, Venice).
Black’s abstract world is made of a variety of materials, not all of them coming from your traditional art shop.
Inside Palazzo Pisani the artist recreated indeed a series of compositions using mud, spray paint, sugar paper, eyeshadow, body paint, lipstick, nail varnish, kids’ chalks, powder paint and plaster, polythene, cellophane, soap and bath balls.
Black usually picks her materials – that at times also include medicines and cleaning products – according to their textures and colours, considering the joy of physically interacting with them as a fundamental point of her work.
The artist also juxtaposes light and airy knotted pieces of transparent materials such as cellophane (for example the installation "Blame Wasn’t Really There" in which cellophane is transformed into a translucent veil) with more solid elements such as soap, sterilised topsoil and compost (the piece "Brains Are Really Everything") that are piled in cake-like organic towers, or they are layered and spilled on the floor of the 15th century Venetian palazzo.
Baby blue, soft pink, light yellow and mint green prevail hinting maybe at a return to infantile creativity and inspiring the visitors to go back to childhood memories, but the installations aren’t only visual: upon entering the rooms visitors feel as if they were stepping upon the doorstep of a Lush cosmetics shop (Lush is indeed among the sponsors of this installation...).
This reference to cosmetics (Black previously used in her work eyeshadow, pink face powder, concealers and Vaseline) is considered by critics as a reference to femininity, though it’s actually prompted more by her impetus towards physicality and matter, two topics that also inspired Black her recent insterest in scientific and quantum theories.
The walls of Palazzo Pisani, painted in pastel colours, perfectly match with Black’s works creating an interesting effect, though the installation does at times have a problem as Black's pieces do not invite the visitors to interact or play with them but stand detached in their beautiful and fragrant pastel-coloured isolation.
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That was kinda different, but I think it kinda looks
like messy. Hmm, maybe I'm just wrong.
Posted by: Fathers Day Special | June 13, 2011 at 06:48 PM