Gabriel Lester
55th Venice Biennale
55th Venice Biennale, Venice, IT
1 Jun 2013 – 15 Sep 2015
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A winner of Special mentions for National Participations of the 55th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, Oo is the pavilion that brings together two countries: Cyprus and Lithuania. Curated by Raimundas Malašauskas, the twin pavilions feature artists Liudvikas Buklys, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Jason Dodge, Lia Haraki, Maria Hassabi, Phanos Kyriacou, Myriam Lefkowitz, Gabriel Lester, Elena Narbutaitė, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Algirdas Šeškus, Dexter Sinister, Constantinos Taliotis, Kazys Varnelis, Natalie Yiaxi, and Vytautė Žilinskaitė.
Oo is a slightly asymmetric structure conveying uneven, yet mutually open elements; slinging in a movement of a constant twist between the two (at least), suspicious of one, entailed by organizational surfing. Drawing on interest in forms of organization rather than organization of forms, it floats like life and plankton.
An exhibition curated from its middle starts as a dream or with 5 artists walking into the Internet (one of them meets living sculptures on the streets of Venice), runs the test of childhood or writes a new obituary for a long-time dead illusionist, steps into TV gymnastics or moves along the lines of furniture and cinema, flashes with dog’s eyes or lights up neon in Maya, brings a motorcycle closer to modernist architecture or freezes, stays frozen or triggers electric currents, shoots for the last time or wonders like a star on a screen- saver, turns into a cross-sequence of walls or flips even and odd pages at once, walks the passage between two people in different cities or tunes the building to a heartbeat, plays an algorithm for the future or sinks into an orchestra pit, (sings back or asks the reader), sounds like a palace in someone’s mouth or joins the book of future children, tastes of the beginning and end simultaneously.
Exhibition as a grand detail belonging to a whole that opens up as a detail within a detail. oO becomes Oo and o0. It takes place in a building that has its own rhythm, character and schedule: the favourite venue of physical exercise in Venice. It will be witnessing a simultaneous co-habitation of art and sports for the entire summer. It can only be matched by the exercise of cosmopolitanism by the two respective countries.