Mike Nelson in Venice

[jasperjoffe]

rave review:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/venice-biennale/8548679/Venice-Biennale-2011-Mike-Nelson-British-Pavilion-review.html

[CAP]

Also an instructive You Tube, unfortunately compered by the simpering Ben Lewis, but provides an excellent interview with Nelson - taking a surprisingly formal line on his installation, and somewhat at odds with the prevailing view of his work as more or less elaborate film sets for sordid settings. Nelson's point is really about the recognition or apprehension of unusual materials or combinations - how we look to surroundings to identify stuff - and states! The many rooms and nooks then shape as a conceptual framework for collecting or categorising, within which rooms determine their content - content determines its 'rooms'. It's a two-way adjustment between what we find, and where we find it.

Actually a similarly formal outlook is proposed by Thomas Hirschhorn in another Lewis You Tube- neatly deflecting Lewis' glib interpretation of the Swiss Pavillion as a condemnation of Capitalism. Lewis and Hirschhorn do look amazingly alike though! - Very funny. But Hirschie's point is more the Maximalist's synthesis of comsumer items into some grander, somewhat subversive scheme. Not so much about smashing Capitalism as democratising it. I think...