A great treat for art lovers

Catalonia at Venice courtesy Institut Ramon Llull; ‘About Turn: Newfoundland in Venice’ by Galleria Ca' Rezzonico, Dorsoduro; and Ai Weiwei's new work are among the collateral events as part of the 2013 Venice Biennale. Here’s a glance at them:

Representing a wider social spectrum

Eight unemployed individuals are chosen, to represent the widest social spectrum (a Senegalese without papers, a young and highly qualified woman architect, a woman scientific researcher, and a blue collar in his fifties..) all of them to be photographed by Francesc Torres during a period of cohabitation with the artist who will document their daily lives.

In addition to the visual documents on their everyday life, Torres makes an official portrait of each of them. After this first phase where the routine activities and the economic situations of all characters has been documented, the filmmaker Mercedes Álvarez makes shootings where every character expresses his/her opinions on the role of art in their lives. So, the eight unemployed people become active subjects of the exhibition.

Cantieri Navali, Castello 40 (San Pietro di Castello) - June 1st – November 24th

Works bordering between abstraction and narrative

‘About Turn: Newfoundland in Venice, Will Gill & Peter Wilkins’ presents new bodies of work by the two contemporary artists based in Newfoundland, Canada. The exhibition is spurred by complementary explorations of mundane narratives. The work, which spans video, photography, and painting, deftly plays within the boundaries of abstraction and narrative; the recognizable and the intangible. Gill’s works blend a feigned naïveté with formal control, lifted from family life and fleeting dreams. Wilkins’ images bridge the art historical and contemporary, employing subtle, distilled abstractions of duration and form.

Terra Nova Art Foundation   May 29th – November 24th

Ai Weiwei’s new work

Ai Weiwei is known internationally for his work reflecting present-day China and his concern with human rights and freedom of expression. This large scale and site-specific presentation for the 55th International Art Exhibition at Zuecca Project Space, presents us with an immediate sense of the drama of an event which underlines the contradictory development of contemporary China.

He will present ‘Straight’, the first project developed using the long steel reinforcing bars recuperated from the schools which collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. This work, a version of which was first presented at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. in 2012, is here installed in a larger scale at Zuecca Project Space.

Zuecca Project Space - May 29th – September 15th