As seen in a previous post, the products and objects on display in the shop recreated inside the Greek Pavilion at the 56th Venice International Exhibition (until 22nd November 2015) can have many different meanings, hiding disturbing symbols behind their superficial blandness. Yet that's not the only store full of symbols that visitors of the art exhibition will be able to see.
Visitors accessing the "Canadassimo" installation at the Canada Pavilion will indeed first find themselves inside a small neighbourhood convenience store. Its shelves are stacked with tinned goods, household essentials, boxes of cereals and snacks in colourful packages (some logos are blurred probably for copyright reasons or to induce further confusion in the visitors...).
This chaotic space is followed by a living area leading to a studio crammed with hundreds of cans covered in drips of coloured paint, shelves of cheap pottery pieces and thousands and thousands of items, objects and products.
Kitsch and shabby madness combine in these chaotic spaces that blur the boundaries between an art museum and a house crammed with cheap tchotchkes.
A staircase leads from this section to a scaffolding structure overlooking the Giardini: once on top, visitors can drop coins into a maze of gutters that sends the money down an intricate route spilling it into thick glassed walls.
Here the coins get trapped between the nuts and bolts integrated in the glass, and they end up forming a sort of decorative motif between the walls, almost to remind visitors that, if money lost its value and power, it could be used for other more banal purposes like decorating a wall (a concept that calls to mind the practice of applying on the walls of churches the bones, skulls or entire skeletons of capuchin friars to prove that, once you die and the soul abandons your body, what remains can be used for other purposes, including decorative ones...).
In this path through a world of products, objects and materials art rubs shoulders with merchandise and economics; the theme of consumerism is reinforced while the complex links between interior and exterior, the structure of the pavilion and the architectonic elements of the installation are also explored.
BGL - the artist collective behind the Canada Pavilion comprising Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière - radically transformed the space that at times ends up giving the impression that the vast immersive installation is still under construction.
Active on the Canadian and international art scene since it was founded in Quebec City in 1996, BGL participated in many international events, group exhibitions and biennials, winning the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in 2007 and the York Wilson Endowment Award in 2012.
Works by BGL are also part of many museum collections including the National Gallery of Canada, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
In 2014, BGL won two major public artwork competitions: the one for the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games in Toronto, and, in Montréal, the competition for the largest project ever commissioned by the Public Art Bureau of the Ville de Montréal.
"In its excessiveness, 'Canadassimo' creates a kind of materialist frenzy," BGL stated in an official press release.
"When we visited the pavilion for the first time, we found its architecture odd and on a human scale that doesn't quite match its role as an exhibition space. We were also struck by its position in the Giardini. We came up with the idea of integrating it into a labyrinthine installation and playing with the exterior surroundings by building an extension and making people enter through a small store in the heart of the Giardini – so they have to pass through a service area to getting to the art."
Through "Canadassimo", the collective raises therefore social and political issues related to lifestyle, economics and culture, reminding visitors that, quite often, art is merchandise, while ordinary objects can instead becoming works of art (though we seriously doubt that the Darth Vader-shaped plant pot featured in one of the most cluttered spaces could be filed under such category...).
Marie Fraser, curator of the exhibition, art history and museology lecturer at the Université du Québec à Montréal and member of Figura, Centre de recherche sur le texte et l’imaginaire, added about the installation, "Composed almost entirely of recycled materials, 'Canadassimo' conveys a sense of the excess to which contemporary society is prone, but also conjures the eccentric character of a bricoleur/artist who collects anything and everything."
Yet the recycled materials and objects stored in these spaces provide not just an insight into the life of the fictional and eccentric compulsive hoarder, tinkerer and junk collector who may be living here, but also hint at the excesses of North American society, criticising a system dominated by productivity and a form of existence centered upon it.
BGL invites people to think about the power of unproductivity and re-appropriate natural and physical conditions, a final and positive message that could be applied to the lives of many of us and to many industries.
While a healthy dose of unproductivity (or of reduced productivity) can indeed help us refocusing our attention on the most important people, things and values in our lives, it may also be the key to save the creativity of designers in the fashion industry.
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