La Biennale di Venezia. 51ª International art exhibition: The experience of art-Always a little further-Participating countries. Collateral events

The 2005 edition of the oldest and most famous exhibition of contemporary art presents several important innovations: first and foremost the beginning of a new cycle that will initiate a creative dialogue with the Artistic Direction by setting new objectives and confirming the central role of the Biennale in the international cultural and artistic debate.

For the first time in the history of its 110 years of activity the direction has been entrusted to two Directors, María de Corral and Rosa Martínez - art historians, critics and independent curators from Spain -, and the exhibition will be composed of two specific and complementary shows that will offer an articulated yet homogeneous reading of international contemporary art from the Seventies through today, with an eye to the near future. The two exhibition projects - The Experience of Art and Always a Little Further conceived respectively by María de Corral and by Rosa Martínez - will present, from different points of view, the best of contemporary art through a rigorous selection of artists, invited in a limited number and each represented by a series of works that document their creative history, to demonstrate the variety of artistic languages and aesthetic trends. The works on display will mostly be new or made in situ, and will be installed so that they dialogue with the extraordinary spaces of the exhibition in order to offer two levels of interpretation, as research for experts in the field, and as impact for the visitors.

The Experience of Art, curated by María de Corral, will be hosted in the 34 rooms of the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale and will present forty-two international artists, famous or promising, within an itinerary made up of a significant number of paintings, videos and installations, most of them created especially for the Biennale, which will represent the trends in the development of various languages since 1970, considered as the point of departure for the itinerary, until today. The exhibition was conceived by María de Corral to be "more similar to a centre for experimentation than a stack of certainties", to deal with intensity, not categories, and to rediscover the emotion of art.

Always a Little Further, curated by Rosa Martínez, in the 9,000 square meters of the Corderie and the Artiglierie of the Arsenale, will present forty-nine international artists united by their research into the nature of the contemporary, who will offer a variegated overview of the latest trends through videos, sculptures and installations conceived for these specific venues. The exhibition will develop along a linear itinerary that will embrace the spaces without compromising their continuity, to highlight their unique and evocative nature. The title of the exhibition is inspired by a book of Corto Maltese, an adventurous character invented by Venetian writer and comic artist Hugo Pratt, who becomes the vehicle through which to state that art is a construction of the imagination to understand reality better. The exhibition, in the vision of Rosa Martínez, "constitutes a test to present artists and aesthetic trends at the beginning of the new millennium and the visit to the Arsenale becomes a fragmentary and exciting voyage to discover the zones of light and shadow in our convulsive world."

In addition, ten installations, related to the two main exhibitions, will be set up in the outdoor exhibition areas and disseminated within the city.

A special project, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Biennale, will be installed on the bank in front of the entrance to the Giardini, which will host a gigantic work by Fabrizio Plessi entitled "Mare verticale" (2000), a technological totem made of steel and aluminum, 44 meters high, presented at the International Exhibition in Hanover in 2000. The work will subsequently be exhibited in China in 2006 as one of the events for the year of Italy in that country.

The National Participations register the largest number of participants in the history of the Biennale: seventy-three countries will present 31 exhibitions in the pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale and 42 in many other venues in Venice, to involve the entire city. A positive sign that confirms the excellent level of quality and the profoundly international character of the Venetian exhibition, perceived as a crossroads and a legacy of the entire world. Many countries are participating in the Art Biennale for the first time, including Afghanistan, Albania, Morocco, the Republic of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

The collateral events of the 51st Exhibition, selected among hundreds of proposals, will number twenty-three, and feature exhibitions, performances, conferences, seminars and events from the visual arts to contemporary poetry, spreading from the northern edge of the Arsenale to the center of Venice, from the islands of the Lagoon all the way to Mestre and Marghera.

The four major Prizes of the 51st Exhibition will be awarded by two Juries, one for international exhibitions and one for the national participations, coordinated by President Ida Gianelli. The Prizes will be: a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, a Golden Lion for the Best National Presentation, a Golden Lion to a Young Artist (Under 30) participating in the international exhibitions, and a Golden Lion to an Artist participating in the international exhibitions. During the awards ceremony, the Prize for Young Italian Art 2004-2005, sponsored by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities DARC - General Direction for Architecture and Contemporary Art, will also be assigned.

The catalogue, edited by Marsilio, will be articulated into three practical volumes dedicated respectively to the two main exhibitions and the international participations together with the collateral events.