53rd Venice Biennial: Selected Artists of National Pavilions

7. June ~ 22. Nov. Giardini, Venice, Italy

Arts Council Korea announced that commissioner Eungie Joo has selected artist Haegue Yang for a solo presentation of new work in the Korean Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale. Haegue Yang works primarily in sculpture, video, and installation. Her practice is engaged with history, human sentiment, lived experience, and memory. Yang? work seeks an emotional relationship to the audience predicated on a kind of vulnerability offered by the artist that in turn relies upon the participation and subjectivity of the viewer. ?aegue Yang is a compelling artist whose work speaks to a complex struggle for context through the stimulation of human senses and the experience of the viewer. The project for the Biennale is a great opportunity for us to continue our ongoing conversation in the form of an international exhibition that echoes the artist? preoccupations with Europe and Asia,?says Eungie Joo.
Liam Gillick will be the artist presented at the German Pavilion during the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. The curator of the German Pavilion is Nicolaus Schafhausen, director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Liam Gillick has produced much of his work in Germany, was early to address emergent post-socialist systems and new social models in Europe. His practice represents the ideal projection surface for contemporary art in the twenty-first century. His work operates on several levels of a multi-layered artworld. The theme of his work is the varied phenomena of social utopias that he stages via hypothetical social models, both visual and literary. Nicolaus Schafhausen says ?hrough his need to play with the complexity of the contemporary terrain, Gillick has provided models of thought that are not merely binary. He has operated in parallel to known models of work - critic, designer and artist. And this has permitted him to provoke new questions without the necessity to offer simple solutions.?Steve McQueen is to represent Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Bienial. McQueen was selected to present a solo exhibition in the British Pavilion by an independent panel appointed by the British Council. The exhibition will be shown from 7 June to 22 November 2009, and details of the exhibition? content will be released during the verniss-age of the Venice Biennale, 4 June to 6 June 2009.
?lvinas Kempinas will represent Lithuania at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Inter-national Art with commissioner Laura Rutkut?and curator Laima Kreivyt?
www.labiennale.org