by Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys at the Venice Biennale. It’s a display of the human condition. The exhibition features a group of automated puppets set amongst a series of large drawings of pastoral scenes and steel grids that fence off the pavilion’s lateral recesses. Some of these puppets are craftsmen – a musician, a shoemaker, a knife grinder, a spinner – who faithfully exercise their respective skills. It is a utopian world, pure and clean. Around the edges is a parallel world filled with rogueing zombies, poets, psychotics, and dropouts. These two realities coexist in the same space, but appear unaware of one another. They do not touch and this segregation is evident. The pavilion acts as a true promenade, similar to a touristic or anthropological experience reminiscent of an older Europe. Of course what interests me is the poet behaving in ways that are expected/unexpected.

I was lucky enough to visit the Venice Biennale last Sunday and wentr to the Giardinio and Arsenale. It’s quite overpowering 5 and a half hours looking at art from names who are totally unfamiliar. I won’t go through them all but the tone was set with the Belgium display by Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys. A display of automated puppets some of whom in the centre represent an ideal world (craftsmen, muscians etc) and other around them from the real world behind bars (poets, dropout, zombies etc). In additional each character is given a mini biography which made me think that we all live and are true to our own stories. It’s like an anthropological experience of an older and utopian Europe. https://artreview.com/previews/2019_venice_questionnaire_jos_de_gruyter_and_harald_thys_belgium/