Feature: Venice Biennale art depicts "all the world's futures"

All the World's Futures, the theme of the 56th edition of Venice Biennale running from May 9 to Nov. 22, is a complex one.

"The topic is broad and can go in all kind of ways, specific or general," an Italian visitor, Gianni Grelli, told Xinhua. "So far I really enjoyed the Spanish pavilion, but it is just my first day here and I am looking very much forward to seeing how other pavilions have interpreted the theme," he added.

The Spanish Pavilion presents several newly produced creations that can be observed from the logic of complexity. One of the artists created impediments to accessibility in the pavilion, questioning the idea of what is and is not a work of art. Another one used the months prior to the opening to film a performative situation in the empty pavilion.

"Back to basics, this is how I see the future," a visitor from the Netherlands, Annegien van Doorn, said as she stepped out of the Dutch Pavilion, whose works made from natural materials attest to the idea that processes and phenomena in nature are too complex to explain in a rational manner.

Some visitors after observing some of the works denouncing social injustices at the international art exhibition said they felt quite pessimistic about the "world's futures." "A few people have much money and all the rest is poor," noted a German visitor, Stefan Urlbauer. "I am not really optimistic. I think we need to change something in this world for a better future," stressed a young French, Michael Coux.

Some others were of a different opinion. "Personally speaking, I am more inclined to be optimistic," a Chinese art student, Yao Xiaofei, told Xinhua while touring the Venice Biennale. "Maybe there is a key for every problem and I found a big ocean of keys here," a German girl, Luisa Berger, said referring to an installation featuring an enormous number of keys in the Japan Pavilion.

"Everyone has different views, but what this edition's theme tell us is that contemporary art can be a very sensitive instrument that we have in our hands to get an idea of where modern reality is going," Riccardo Caldura, a professor of phenomenology of contemporary arts at the Academy of Art in Venice, which has close relations with the Venice Biennale, explained to Xinhua.

"Contemporary art is paying an extreme attention towards what happens in the world, its changes and transformations. And there is always something unpredictable and surprising coming out, which only art makes it possible to narrate," Caldura, who is also an art critic and curator, went on saying.

He highlighted "everyone should stay close to contemporary art" as contemporary art is an "incredible training for human sensibility."

According to official estimates, as of July 1 more than 108,000 people have visited the Venice Biennale. Organizers told Xinhua that the visitor trend has been very positive so far. In the 2013, 2011 and 2009 editions the two-year event respectively totaled 475,000, 440,000 and 375,702 visitors.

"The Biennale is now 120 years old, and year after year it builds on its own history, formed of many memories but, in particular, a long succession of different perspectives from which to observe the phenomenon of contemporary artistic creation," President of the Venice Biennale Paolo Baratta said.

Nigerian art critic and director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich Okwui Enwezor is the curator of this year edition, which features 89 participant countries, 44 collateral events and 136 international artists. "We have invited Enwezor to be the curator for his special sensitivity," Baratta said.

Despite the great progress made in knowledge and technology, Baratta noted, humankind is currently negotiating an "age of anxiety". "Our aim is to investigate how the tensions of the outside world act on the sensitivities and the vital and expressive energies of artists," he said. Endit