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Sex, Death and Oil

Bizzare Worlds at the Venice Biennale

By Heiko Klaas and Nicole Büsing in Venice

The German Pavilion in Venice, designed by Isa Genzken, is a surreal world of mysterious cases, hovering spacesuits and rubber reptiles. In the British Pavilion Tracey Emin explores sex, desire and gender, while France's Sophie Calle examines the female reaction to rejection. Just some of the many enticing exhibitions at this year's Biennale.

Isa Genzken has already awarded herself an Oscar. But will she win the Golden Bear for the best pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year? A small brass plate, with "Best Film 2007" decorates a pedestal with a 40-centimeter-high Oscar trophy. This is just one of the many small details from her installation "Oil" which fills the large exhibition space and small side chambers in the Germany Pavilion, redesigned by the Nazis in 1938.

The 59-year-old Genzken, who describes herself as a sculptor, is shy and tends to hide behind her work. She is Germany's official representative at the 52^nd Biennale in Venice, which starts this weekend. For the "Oil" installation she delved once again into her bag of tricks, one that includes trash, space-age glamor, decorative surfaces and everyday objects.

A mirrored wall prevents immediate entry into the interior of the pavilion. Once inside, visitors find a collection of different types of boxes: trolleys, suitcases, first aid boxes, and toolboxes. All of them are absurdly decorated with a variety of objects: from guitars to water pipes, Rembrandt placards and kitsch posters of dogs and cats. Stuffed owls enthrone pieces of luggage in symbolic and surreal ways. Only one item, a simple red hard-cover case, is not decorated. One thing is certain: Isa Genzken is not interested in banal decoration.

Unattended Luggage

Visitors can take their time to mull over the idea that an unattended piece of luggage can mutate into an explosive weapon. And with this thought suddenly the potential meaning of all the other objects starts to gradually unfold. What is the idea behind the hangman's ropes that are dangling from the ceiling, from which stuffed animals and rubber reptiles rotate? Perhaps the execution of Saddam Hussein and his followers? But of course that is never explicitly stated. itt would be too obvious and Genzken is just a bit more subtle than that.

Genzken has placed terrifying rubber masks with protruding eyes on columns, which makes them look like trophies. And she has covered them with kitsch decorative masks from the Venetian Carnival, ones that can be picked up in any tourist shop: an obvious comment by someone who has distanced herself from the world of consumerism, souvenir shops and cheap leisure activities.

But she is also making a comment about the current policies of the United States. Astronaut suits -- once a symbol of the invulnerable superpower -- hang like flabby shells from the 12-meter-high ceiling.

Genzken's world is as bizarre as it is calculated. She uses stainless steel, Plexiglas and silver foil to create a world full of allusions to the dubious temptations of the consumer world and the destructive power of global power politics in the age of the slowly dwindling natural resources. The title "Oil" is no accident.

Only 25 visitors are allowed into the German Pavilion at any one time. The building is almost unrecognizable, covered in a scaffolding of orange mesh that is used on Italian building sites. It is a way to create long queues and and show just how much in demand you are.

Sex, Desire and Female Sensitivity

France and Great Britain have the pavilions next door to Germany's, and the two countries are also sending established artists to this year's Biennale. Tracey Emin, 44, once the female figurehead of the Young British Artists (YBA), became famous for exhibiting unmade beds and sticking the names of her former lovers onto a wool blanket. In the British Pavilion her art has an almost museum-like noble quality, with framed drawings and early water colors neatly exhibited in a row. The one time "Bad Girl" has become an established artist. But Emin's themes are the same as ever: sex, desire, the war of the genders and traumatic abortion experiences.

Sophie Calle, born in 1953, tells a very French tale in the pavilion next door. What happens when a woman receives a letter from a man who wants to break up with her? The role is taken on by 107 French women, some very famous, who react in very different ways to the fictitious proclamation "It's over!" What emerges is a visually diverse album full of emotion, questioning, grief, violability, pride, and melancholy. Video projections, texts and photos add to a panoptic of female sensitivity. This is exactly in tune with Rober Storr's motto for this year's Biennale "Think with the senses -- Feel with the mind."