And more Contemporary Art.

Duane Hansen 'Bus Stop Lady' (1983) USA. Uncanny.

Some more highlights from the Venice Biennale, this time from the Arsenale site, where a few more countries were represented, including Italy and China. There was also room after room in the old industrial complex of individual artists - much higher-quality stuff (IMHO) than the Giardini Central Pavilion. See what you think...

Daniel Hesidence 'Untitled - Maritime Spring' (2012) - USA.
One of the rare 2D offerings. Rich marine colours.

Not entirely sure (forgot to take a note of the artist), but striking.

Walls and walls of comic book pages. I read few. Religious themes.
The artist might be saying something by putting comic pages on the wall. But they'd be much easier to peruse in comic book format.

Shinichi Sawada 'Untitled - Spiked Face'. (2000 - 2007) Japan.
One of a cabinet of similar figures. Highly textured clay, and strangely Japanese.

Pawel Althamer 'Venetians' (2013) Polish, I think.
There was a whole room full of these people, carefully made. Spooky. 

John DeAndrea 'Ariel II' (2011) USA.
This is painted bronze. An uncanny texture.

Charles Ray, 'Fall '91' (1992).
This is blurry because the guy with the fan was yelling "no photo!" Ironically, it was him
standing beside the work that attracted me to take a photo, because you could see the odd scale.

Prabhavathi Meppayil 'Untitled' (2011) India.
Copper wire embedded in gesso. The artist, a woman, works with Indian jewellery craftsmen.
Minimalist, quiet, deep.

Walter De Maria 'Apollo's Ecstasy' (1990)
This artist is big in "Land Art" - kilometres of concrete walls, metal rods in the desert, that sort of thing.

Akram Zaatari 'Letter to a Refusing Pilot' (Lebanon Pavilion)
A video work I actually liked. Highly political, makes a clear an important statement, and uses 'The Little Prince'.
And not in a darkened room.

Yup. Kosovo.
This was followed by a large installation made of tree branches that you could walk into. It had peepholes that showed you women's clothing on hangers in a white room. *more information needed*

This was in the Kosovo pavilion too, Masterful draughtsmanship and precise and elegant lighting.

I don't know what's going on, but clearly something very dramatic. Life-sized. The Indonesian Pavilion.

An olfactory - and colourful - piece in a combined South American space.

From the Pavilion of the Bahamas, which was - I thought ironically - concerned entirely with Polar themes.
Artist Tavares Strachan. This piece - one of many different ones - is an example of the fairly popular (and clever) technique of using of tiny images to make a bigger one (in this case, the big image os a polar bear.) 

Yes, a piece of Polar ice. Pavilion of the Bahamas.
There was also a companion piece - 'fake Polar ice'.

Elisabetta Benassi 'The Dry Salvages' (2013). Italian Pavilion.
An uneven floor (you can walk on it) of 10,000 bricks made of clay from a flood plain and stamped
with the codes of the largest pieces of space debris still in orbit. And a T S Eliot poem referenced in there, too.
Monumental, carefully made, and thought-provoking. All the best qualities. Though you do need the explanation.

Shu Yong 'Guge Bricks 1500' (2013) China.
The artist took 1,500 slogans, words, maxims and quotations from Chinese and translated them into English
with Google Translate. Then he printed the results on paper and stuck them to these bricks. As above.

Li Wei 'Floating over Venice' (2013) - a performance.
In the Republic of Kenya Pavilion (in a Venetian office building).
This photo is a result, presumably, of the performance.