by Rachael Lambert
Venice opens May 9. The week it opens, almost everything that would normally govern it, the artist selection process, the press, the institutional frameworks, becomes visibly broken at once. I have been to the Biennale many times, as a director, as a dealer, as someone who builds and runs the machines. If you have never managed a location-specific multi-component installation across international customs, a city founded in the 5th century with no roads, and seventeen time zones, the logistics make any international art fair look like a bake sale. They also speak their own distinct dialect, Venetian, going strong since the medieval Republic. It is not Modern Italy. It is something older and mystical and more itself.
It is one of the great cities of the world, in deep contention with Florence, always, which is part of why this week has been difficult to sit with.
