Venise 1972-2024
Vincent Meessen participates through a dialogue with art historian, curator and teacher Raphaël Pirenne to Venise 1972-2024, a retrospective edition of the artistic projects produced by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB) in the Belgian Pavilion in the Giardini in Venice. Personne et les autres – Vincent Meessen and guests was a research-based and collective pavilion curated by Katerina Gregos in 2015 in the framework of the 56th Venice Biennale.
Presenting the series of exhibition projects, an attempt is made to understand the implementation of a project of this scale and its consequences on an artist’s work. The edition is complemented by two background texts by Raymond Balau and Maïté Vissault. Raymond Balau has produced a comprehensive study, never carried out so far, and an unpublished history of the ‘Padiglione del belgio’, the first pavilion erected in 1907 by Léon Sneyers in the Giardini.
Maïté Vissault also sets out to highlight the key elements of the Biennale’s ‘historical’ story, whose implications are immense, both artistically and historically, as well as politically and economically.
The first chapter presents the pavilions from 2024 to 1995. The presentation of this first chapter takes the form of texts and/or interviews, in which the exhibition project is presented and an attempt is made to understand the implementation of a project of this scale and its consequences on an artist’s work.
A second chapter, for which Marc Renwart was chosen, focuses on artistic projects from the 1990s to 1972. In order to create a complete historical continuum, the projects of the Flemish Community, whose Pavilion was twinned with the FWB, have been implemented.
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