The Museum of Everything Makes Its Venice Biennale Debut

The Museum of Everything

The Museum of Everything makes it’s mark on the 55th Venice Biennale “Il Palazzo di Everything”,on the 28th and 29th May and 1st June with the presentation of over a dozen artists. The Museum has been selected (proclaimed) as an Official Collateral Event. They have stated; “As summer tumbles down upon us, you will find us prostrate on the grass at Il Palazzo di Everything, located at the famous Serra dei Giardini, that tranquil patch of grassy Venetian real estate next to the main pavilions”.
 
Morton Bartlett, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, James Castle, Guo Fengyi, Emma Kunz, Achilles Rizzoli,Shinichi Sawada, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Drossos Skyllas,Eugene Von Bruenchenhein and Anna Zemánková, plus legendary masterpieces by Hilma af Klint and Arthur Bispo do Rosário are included in this years lineup. The first for the Museum.
 
It’s a momentous moment, and in response The Museum of Everything is planning to unveil its own al-fresco construction dedicated to Carlo Zinelli: that master of Italian self-taught vernacular, whose humble Veronese upbringing did not anticipate the swirling auto-biographical gouaches which inspired the likes of Dino Buzzati, Jean Dubuffet andAndré Breton.

Carlo Zinelli’s life-story is as beguiling as the paintings he imagined; for it was the horrors of war which led to their evolution, enabled by the pioneering activities of sculptor Michael Noble and psychiatrist Vittorino Andreoli. Their certainty in his creative potential, and that of so many of his peers, are what led to an oeuvre of over two thousand artworks – fifty of which are today presented by The Museum of Everything, in conjunction with the Zinelli family and the Fondazione Culturale Carlo Zinelli.
 
It all happened right here in Italy, just 100km down the road from Venice itself. So they urge you, fly to this watery city, speed-boat over to Il Palazzo di Everything and discover this visual war poet, revealed for the first time at the most important art event since the last most important art event. Some might consider this news a big deal. But they’re far too busy trying to complete their installation in time. What is true, however, is that this year’s Venice Biennale celebrates over a dozen of the self-taught artists they champion at The Museum of Everything.
 
At this, the first Venice Biennale actively to embrace non-destinational art, The Museum of Everything presents The Salon of Everything: an informal philosophical hot-house with leading figures from the worlds of visual culture – be they artists, curators, writers, historians, or just handsome hangers-on with attitude. Conversations at The Salon of Everything will ruminate upon private art-making practices, symbolic languages, self-taught obsessions, non-intentional making, as well as notions of otherness and difference in common or garden contemporary art. Would-be radicals at the rolling round-table may include artists Jeremy Deller and Cindy Sherman, curators Jean-Hubert Martin and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and global shape-shifters aplenty. The Salon of Everything will take place most afternoons and some mornings during the opening week(s) of the biennale. All sessions will be documented to form an historic archive of ideas and opinions, in conjunction with the BBC. Just turn up to see who’s chatting and if you’re gobby, you may even be invited to interrupt and lead your own session. Conversations at The Salon of Everything will ruminate upon private art-making practices, symbolic languages, self-taught obsessions, non-intentional making, as well as notions of otherness and difference in common or garden contemporary art.

Massimiliano Gioni, the esteemed director of this year’s Venice Biennale, without whom these alternative artists and artforms would not be having their long-awaited moment in the (Venetian) sun. His curatorial centrepiece – Marino Auriti’s Il Palazzo Encyclopedico(The Encyclopedic Palace to you and me) has provided the world with an opportunity to examine up close this strange, slightly unknowable, often overlooked genre.

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