VENICE— The 2011 iteration of the Venice Biennale, that art-world exhibition that combines the Olympic thrill of awards (the Golden Lion for best in show and the Silver Lion for best emerging artists) with World’s Fair-style pavilions, is still more than a year away. Nevertheless, participating nations have already begun to announce their selections. ARTINFO will provide the latest updates as Biennale developments arise.
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Switzerland

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Swiss officials announced that Thomas Hirschhorn and Andrea Thal have been picked to represent Switzerland at the biennale in 2011. Hirschhorn, a Paris-based artist who was born in Bern, Switzerland, is perhaps best known for large-scale installations patched together with duct tape and tinfoil that often concern issues of left-wing politics and globalization. His participation in past international exhibitions has sometimes taken the form of radical interventions, as at Documenta XI in 2002, when he built his installations in a town a few miles from the exhibition’s home base of Kassel, Germany, forcing people to travel to see the work in a modest suburb. Thal is a comparatively lesser known figure. She runs Les Complices*, an artist-run gallery space in Zurich, and has organized show and projects focused on music and performance. In 2009, Switzerland sent Silvia Bächli and Fabrice Gygi to Venice, in 2007 Ugo Rondinone was tapped, and in 2005 Pipilotti Rist was picked alongside four other artists, Ingrid Wildi, Gianni Motti, Shahryar Nashat, and Marco Poloni. Despite its modest size and its supposed neutrality in international conflicts, Switzerland has proved to be a fierce competitor on the international art stage, hosting the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fair (Art Basel) and rearing many of the art world’s most formidable power players.

The Full List

Canada
America’s northern neighbor has selected multi-medium artist Steven Shearer for the 2011 biennale. Born in 1968, Shearer has exhibited infrequently in recent years, recently being paired with Daniel Guzmán in a 2008 show at New York’s New Museum. In a statement to press, National Gallery of Canada director and CEO Marc Mayer said, “Under its pop cultural surface, Steven Shearer’s work is surprisingly complex and insightful.” An alumn of American Fine Arts, the storied New York gallery run by the late Colin de Land, Shearer is represented by Galleria Franco Noero in Turin and Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. The Canadian pavilion was designed by the Milan-based architecture firm BBPR and was first used at the 1958 biennale. The nation has been participating in the international exhibition since 1952.

France
Christian Boltanski will represent France in an exhibition curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, a former director of the Centre Pompidou. The artist is best known for his haunting, dimly-lit installation often featuring children and acerbic world view. He once told an interviewer, “We are a subject one day, with our vanities, our loves, our worries, and then one day, abruptly, we become nothing but an object, an absolutely disgusting pile of shit.” France will be celebrating nearly a century in its pavilion, which was designed by Faust Finzi in 1912.

Germany
Germany’s pick for the Venice Biennale, director, actor, and artist Christoph Schlingensief has died as a result of lung cancer, according to Deutsche Well. He was 49. His selection earlier this year had been viewed as a somewhat unusual choice, since he was better known as a director than as an artist. German officials say they plan to review Schlingensief’s plans for the pavilion in coming weeks, studying the feasibility of his initial proposals. The pavilion’s curator, Susanne Gaensheimer, has said that he “had already developed many themes and details with enthusiasm,” according to Artforum. Earlier this year, Schlingensief described the honor as “a fantastic surprise,” noting that he had “worked in many areas, as a film, theater and opera director, as a producer, as a stand-up entertainer, as a person, and that includes as a sick person and Christ, not to mention as a politician and performer.” The pick had attracted criticism from many quarters, with artist Gerhard Richter calling the selection “a scandal.” Following Schlingensief’s death, Gaensheimer noted, “Now, we have to discuss things calmly and then see.” Germany’s pavilion was designed by Ernst Haiger and inaugurated in 1938 by the ruling Nazi government, a fact that has inspired artistic responses from some presenters. Hans Haacke’s 1993 exhibition, for example, included a large photograph of Hitler.

Great Britain
The British Council has selected installation artist Mike Nelson to fill the nation’s Edwin Alfred Rickards–designed pavilion. Nelson, who is known for gigantic-scaled installation work, has been shortlisted twice for the nation’s Turner Prize and appeared in a group exhibition at the 2001 Biennale. In 2008 the Tate acquired one of his large pieces, “The Coral Reef,” 2000, which will be on display at Tate Britain from May 17, 2010. Nelson’s selection could augur a more complicated presentation than the relatively compact works the pavilion has displayed in recent years, such as the contributions by Steve McQueen in 2009 and Tracey Emin in 2007.
Iceland
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson (not to be confused with artist Olafur Eliasson, who represented his native Denmark in 2003) will be handed the keys to the pavilion in 2011. The two have collaborated on projects since 1997. Castro also has distinction of being one of the rare artists picked to represent a country of which he is not a citizen, a feat achieved last year by Briton Liam Gillick, who represented Germany at the exhibition. The humble island nation has been visiting the Biennale since 1960, back when it was held in even-numbered years–this year marks their fiftieth anniversary.

Ireland
Ireland has named sculptor Corban Walker as its 2011 artist ambassador to Venice. Emily-Jane Kirwan, a director at the Pace Gallery who formerly worked as an arts officer of the South Dublin County Council, has been named the commissioner of the nation’s pavilion. Known for large-scale sculptures and installations that often involve sheets of glass, Walker’s work has recently been featured at LentSpace in downtown Manhattan and Shaquille O’Neal’s “Size Matters” show at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. His work is currently on view at the Winkleman Curatorial Research Lab in “Reflective Reflexion,” a show organized by by painter Joy Garnett. In 2009, the island nation was represented by artists Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy.

Israel
Artist Sigalit Landau has been picked by Israel’s Ministry of Sport and Culture to represent the country. Landau earned a solo show (curated by Klaus Biesenbach) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York 2008, where she memorably presented a hypnotic, vibrant video of her floating alongside a stream of watermelons, and another of her hoola-hooping with a ring of barbed wire. In 1995 she won the Wolf Fund Anselm Kiefer Prize, which is devoted to young artists — she was 26 at the time — and the Israel Culture Minister’s Prize. Designed by Zeev Rechter, Israel’s 1952 pavilion has three exhibition floors (a somewhat unusual feature in the Giardini), and was refurbished in 1966 by architect Fredrik Fogh, who was responsible for a 1987 addition to Scandinavia’s pavilion.

Italy
Italian culture minister Sandro Bondi has named Vittorio Sgarbi as curator of the nation’s pavilion. While previously serving as Italy’s undersecretary of culture, Sgarbi aroused controversy in 2002 when he attempted to have Australian–born art historian Robert Hughes named curator of the Venice Biennale. He has also made the news for his suggestion that contemporary art is a “dictatorship.” Sgarbi once told a reporter, “I regularly attack what I call the ‘art mafia’ … I fight for minorities, I am for pluralism.”

Japan
Artist Tabaimo (given name: Ayako Tabata) has been selected as the artist to represent Japan at the 54th Biennale di Venezia, under the direction of Yuka Uematsu, curator of the National Museum of Art in Osaka. A 35-year-old artist, Tabaimo is know for vast projections that turn traditional ukiyo-e (“floating world”) woodblock-inspired illustrations into eerie, luminous environments. Working across various mediums, the artist also look to the aesthetics of manga and anime, luring viewers in with images that seem to promise domestic tranquility and order — a promise quickly proven false as Tabaimo’s subversion of the genre becomes apparent. Her work for the festival will tackle the theme of the “Trans-Galápagos Syndrome,” a phenomenon in which a country recedes into isolation in the face of encroaching globalization. In 2001, Tabaimo was the youngest artist ever to participate in the Yokohama Triennale, and in 2000 she received the prestigious Kirin Contemporary Award for her undergraduate thesis. Her selection as the artist to occupy Japan’s 2011 pavilion was announced by James Cohan Gallery, which represents the artist in New York.

New Zealand
Michael Parekowhai has been picked to represent New Zealand in the 2011 Biennale, a selection that the country’s National Business Review declared “the most appropriate [decision] that has been made in recent years.” Parekowhai received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2001 and works as an associate professor at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts. His sculptures are often made from found objects — previous works have involved a Volkswagen van and a grand piano — which he alters to comic effect. Last year, New Zealand’s exhibition, which drew 114,000 visitors, featured the work of Judy Millar and Francis Upritchard.
United States
The Puerto Rico–based multimedia duo Allora & Calzadilla has been announced as the United States’ representatives to the 2011 Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an artist pair or collective has been picked by the nation to fill the prestigious role. The selection was made by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which the U.S. State Department has entrusted to organize next year’s pavilion. Lisa Freiman, the chair of the museum’s contemporary art department, has been tapped as the commissioner of the pavilion, and will also curate the presentation. Bruce Nauman earned the Golden Lion in 2009 for U.S. pavilion installation. Before Nauman, the U.S. was represented by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (posthumously) in 2007, Ed Ruscha in 2005, and Fred Wilson (who, given Allora & Calzadilla’s political commitments, may be the closet to them in spirit) in 2003. While the U.S. has never selected a collaborative group as its Venice entrant, Britain named Gilbert & George to fill its pavilion in 2005.

by artinfo.com