Alien and enigmatic, Slovenian pavilion at Venice Biennale
Slovenia has inaugurated its pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale. It features a work by conceptual artist Nika Špan, displayed in a park between the main exhibition venues of the Arsenale and Giardini.
An unusual nomadic structure, Špan's Garden Secret for You is both a sculpture and architecture. It is framed as an alien and unexpected element in the historical context of Venice.
It features a cellar brought from Poland that sits on a trailer, which visitors can access by stairs and a bridge while having a unique acoustic, visual and spatial experience.
Curator Vladimir Vidmar described the exhibit as an impossible object, a cellar in the middle of Venice, a city where cellars are impossible.
In this way it connects to the slogan of this year's international art exhibition in Venice - Foreigners Everywhere.
Exhibited in a public space next to the former greenhouse Serra dei Giardini, the project also draws attention to the fact that Slovenia does not have a permanent pavilion in Venice.
Špan says she and curator Vidmar based their idea on an enigmatic entity, an industrial element but also a remarkable aesthetic achievement.
The visitors are invited to follow their own wonderment and come up with their own unique set of questions about "what exactly is this unusual, unstable structure that we call a work of art, and how does this experience here define it," says Vidmar.
The work was inaugurated on 17 April, three days before the official opening of the biennale.