Creation ... de-Creation ... re-Creation

At 11:30 this morning, in the John Paul II Hall, in the offices of the Vatican Press Office, a press conference was held, during which a presentation of the Holy See's participation, for the first time with its own pavilion at the 55th Biennial Art Exposition held in Venice.  This year's Expo will take place from June 1 to November 24.

Present at the Press Conference today were His Eminence, Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture; Professor Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums; and Professor Paolo Baratta, President of the Venice Expo.  Also present were Monsgnor Pasquale Iacobone and Doctor Micol Forti, both of whom work in the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Intervention prepared by His Eminence, Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi

President of the Pontifical Council for Culture

 In the Beginning

 

CREATION, UNCREATION, RE-CREATION

The Pontifical Council for Culture holds contemporary art at the heart of its interests for it is one of the most important cultural expressions of recent decades. The Council is promoting the Holy See’s very first participation in the Biennale Arte, a project that is not only extraordinarily innovative, but also responds to its own objectives, that is instituting and promoting occasions of dialogue within an ever broader and diversified context.

For this first occasion, we have chosen a theme that is fundamental for culture and for Church tradition. It is also a source of inspiration for many whose works that have left a mark on the history of art: the story told in the Book of Genesis.

Specifically, the first eleven chapters have been chosen, as they are dedicated to the mystery of man’s origins, the introduction of evil into history, and our hope and future projects after the devastation symbolically represented by the Flood. Wide-ranging discussions on the multiplicity of the themes offered by this inexhaustible source led to three thematic areas being chosen with which the artists have engaged: Creazione (Creation), De-Creazione (Uncreation), and the New Man or Ri-Creazione (Recreation).

The theme of Creation concentrates on the first part of the biblical narrative, when the creative act is introduced through the Word and the breath of the Holy Spirit, generating a temporal and spatial dimension, and all forms of life including human beings.

Uncreation, on the other hand, invites us to focus on the choice of going against God’s original plan through forms of ethical and material destruction, such as original sin and the first murder (Cain and Abel), inviting us to reflect on the inhumanity of man. The ensuing violence and disharmony trigger a new start for humanity, which begins with the punitive/purifying event of the Flood.

In this biblical story, the concept of the voyage, and the themes of seeking and hope, represented by the figure of Noah and his family and then by Abraham and his progeny, eventually lead to the designation of a New Man and a renewed creation, where a profound internal change gives new meaning and vitality to existence.

Clearly, each of these aspects was only a starting point for the selected artists. A vital, rich, and elaborate dialogue has been established with them and is a sign of a renewed, modern patronage. To them, my most heartfelt thanks.

Intervention prepared by Professor Paolo Baratta

President of the Venice Biennale Arte

The world of art and culture welcomes a new event at this year’s Venice Art Biennale. For the first time the Holy See will also be represented in the pavilions of the Iinternational Art Exhibition. This decision is a confirmation of the significance of the Biennale as a platform for exchange and dialogue.

Since the outset of this project, we have followed its evolution closely in order to ascertain that the aims of the Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura (Pontifical Council for Culture) were in line with what the Biennale, by its very nature, can offer.

The quintessence of the Biennale is participation. Diverse energies converge around this International Exhibition we organize, both in the form of participating countries (official participations) and non-profit organizations which develop their own projects (collateral events).

Each one makes its own contribution and is driven by the desire to be seen as part of the far-reaching current debate about artistic production which is considered today, as it was in the past, a vital expression of culture and society.

Within the context of the Biennale two overlapped perspectives emerge very clearly: one is distinguished by cultural, ethnic, linguistic and political boundaries, the other by the rapport between the artists, who either subjugate and go beyond those boundaries or simply ignore them.

However, the Biennale is not a marketplace for exhibiting art in relation to its commercial value; nor is it an Academy dictating rules and conditions. It is rather a place where a work of art is viewed in the context of its creation, as the fruit of the yearnings, motivations and urges of artists and not in view of its final destination (it is therefore certainly not the venue for a Sacred Art exhibition).

The Holy See’s decision has come at a time when contemporary art, once the focus of a small minority, has broken its boundaries and is now appreciated by an expanding audience; in short, it has become popular. 

However, this expansion has increased the danger of commodification, and consequently the temptation of the artist’s fragile practice to veer in that same direction is great.

Conversely, today’s extensive availability of images, coupled with the growing number of the new high-tech ways of using them, is in danger of diluting the ability (not to mention the interest and desire) to question works of art by differentiating in them the infinite array of creative inventions that the modern world can offer. This may jeopardize what has been achieved so far and lead to a regression and, therefore a loss of vitality.

In the wake these events, one must consider the enormous significance of this new development for the opportunities it can provide in creating a more vast and more captivating debate on art.

These themes are very much the focus of the Biennale and are especially vibrant in this 55th edition of the International Art Exhibition that is, and we expressly state, an exhibition-research.

Over the years, the mixed fortunes of contemporary art have witnessed artists who expressed ideas and made declarations that required a form and conversely, artists who created forms that demanded reflection. Yet it has always placed humankind and its doubts at the forefront, seeking the actively engaged viewer rather than the passive consumer.

From this point of view, the renewed attention of the Holy See at this time seems extremely important, as it can support, in a very special way and both directly and indirectly, a discerning and accurate focus for a qualified commission.

Intervention prepared by Professor Antonio Paolucci

Director of the Vatican Museums

THE ARTISTS

In a pavilion configured as wide open to cultural intersections and emotional pathways, we decided to select, in collaboration with the scientific committee, a group of internationally renowned artists who, in the variety of their languages and techniques, would produce converging characteristics, sensibilities, and openings with reference to the path chosen.

The theme of Creation was entrusted to Studio Azzurro, which places the immaterial image, light, sound, and sensory stimuli at the center of their artistic investigation, reflecting on the perceptive dimension of space as a locus of interrelationships through a thoughtful use of new media. Their work triggers a dialogue, awash with echoes and reverberations, between the vegetable and animal kingdoms and the human dimension, which leads, via memory, to other personal narrations on the concept of origins within an interactive plane that is also a temporal intersection.

In terms of De-Creazione (Un-Creation), we reflected on whether it would be opportune to explicitly bring the theme to the fore and make it converge with extremely modern questions. Josef Koudelka’s photographs were chosen and organized by the artist himself into a specific and extremely evocative sequence, where themes such as the destruction brought about by war, the material and conceptual consumption of history through time, and the two opposing poles of nature and industry are made to emerge. The photographer’s images expose an abandoned, wounded world, and at the same time are able to transform fragments of reality into works of art bordering on abstraction.

With the Ri-Creazione (Re-Creation) we concentrate on the activity of Lawrence Carroll, and in particular those aspects of his work tied to salvaged materials and the processes of transfiguration, which the artist presents both realistically and symbolically together. His is an elaboration that, meditating on the experiences of arte povera, actualizes a continuous and cyclical action of recovery and erosion, of suspension and decline, and of pause and reactivation through the reintroduction of objects into a temporal circuit, forcing fragility and monumentality to coexist.

And yet none of the three artistic works can be fully appreciated without recourse to the overall meaning of the three moments as presented in Genesis—each and every one of these moments is able to contain and comprehend the other two.