Alfredo Jaar @ Chilean Pavilion, Venice Biennale
On entry to the darkened Chilean Pavilion one is immediately confronted by a large illuminated photo of what one learns is Italian avantgarde darling Lucio Fontana, exploring the rubble of a freshly bombed Milan. The message hinted at here, of new beginnings, is reinforced after the ascent of the sets of metal stairs that create a stage which looks as if it could have been created by any highmodernist hero.
The central message becomes more apparent in the second element of Jaar’s installation, which consists of a 1:60 scale model of the Giardini (where pavilions of 28 countries, not including Chile, are situated) rising and sinking in a gargantuan iron tank filled with water. Jaar is hardly leaving his audience guessing here; an accompanying text leaves no doubts as to his opposition to the Biennale’s established hierarchy, for his desire to establish a new order.
What is more interesting than this somewhat heavy-handed metaphor is the pseudoformalist framing for this artworld diorama. Between the perfectly rendered miniature ascending out of an industrial sized tank on top of a brutalist, stepped steel pyramid Jaar neatly seems to set the two extremes of the whole spectrum of male sculptural fantasy, from the metal titans of our aforementioned modernists to the hobbyist model that ascends, bondvillainhideoutesque, from the depths.
Combined with the atmospheric lighting and the industrial soundtrack provided by the mechanism that raises and lowers the artworld the whole thing presents an overfraught ritual, perhaps an appropriate metaphor for the periodic emergence of the Venice Biennale itself, which of course devours the kind of interpassivity Jaar heaps upon it. [J.D.A. Winslow]