55. Biennale – Padiglione neozelandese

Bill Culbert rappresenta la Nuova Zelanda alla Biennale di Venezia con la mostra personale dal titolo Front Door Out Back.

Comunicato stampa

Bill Culbert has been commissioned by Creative New Zealand Arts Council of New Zealand, Toi Aotearoa to exhibit at the 55th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia.

Culbert will show site-specific works for the New Zealand Pavilion at the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà (La Pietà). The lagoon-facing venue offers five exhibition spaces, including an outdoor courtyard and a spacious corridor where Vivaldi once taught violin. For the first time the main entrance will be on the Riva degli Schiavoni.

"Bill makes marvelous work, constantly re-investigating how light works and revitalising how we think of it,” says New Zealand’s Venice Biennale Commissioner, Jenny Harper. “Venice is a wonderful platform for us to celebrate his individual achievements and to continue to present the richness of this country’s visual arts practice. It will be fascinating to see how he responds to a venue that is both spatially and historically rich.”

Culbert (b. 1935) is a pioneer of the use of electric light in art, making works that harness the qualities of this most intangible of mediums from as early as the 1960s. Over a career that spans almost six decades, he has pushed the frontiers of art through a rigorous, inventive and economic use of materials. Light is both medium and subject matter in his sculptures, installations and photographs, the means of mounting a philosophical enquiry into the art object and its materiality. Culbert's sculptural installations make striking use of found and new materials. From suitcases pierced with fluorescent tubes, to chandeliers of repurposed furniture, through to arrays of reclaimed plastic containers, his artworks illuminate the qualities of common things and their surrounding environments.

Culbert has had more than 100 solo exhibitions since 1960, showing across New Zealand, England, Europe, the United States, and Australia. His work is owned by numerous public and private collections around the globe and can currently be seen in exhibitions at the Château de Servières, Marseilles, France (19 January to 23 February 2013), and in the Hayward Gallery, London’s group exhibition, 'Light Show' (30 January - 28 April 2013). Culbert is based in Provence, France and London, England.