Venice Biennale 2024: 6 Standout Artists in ‘Foreigners Everywhere’

Rosa Elena Curruchich, El torero. La feria de san juan (The Bullfighter. The Fair of San Juan) (c.1980). Oil on canvas. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

1. Rosa Elena Curruchich, Guatemala

The miniature paintings of Rosa Elena Curruchich are a reminder that bigger is not always better.

Humble and thoughtfully curated, the meticulously detailed paintings wrap the large white exhibition room, depicting daily life, traditional customs, and religious festivities of her Indigenous Mayan community of the western highlands of Guatemala.

They are tiny, but purposely so, allowing the self-taught artist to discreetly transport them when moving from place to place during the country's violent civil war period (1960–1996), with much of her work done in secret.

The framing was glorious too. Some exposed wooden frames, others painted, all exquisitely framing the characters—particularly women—going about their daily lives within an Indigenous organisation.

Lean in even closer and you'll notice the small text, which could be mistaken for a signature, describing the characters and actions playing out in each scene.

Exhibition view: River Claure. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

2. River Claure, Bolivia

Bolivian photographer River Claure focuses on identity and decolonisation in his native country, while also being heavily influenced by South American magical realist literature from the 1970s and '80s.

The dramatic landscape of the Bolivian Andes provides the perfect setting for his cinematic compositions but it is the witty and often bizarre incidents that lends the best work a poetic quality: a man's head pokes out from the top of a pile of animal skins, another figure snoozes against a road sign, and a group of people circle up, as if about to set off on an expedition in the desert.

Domenico Gnoli, Sous la Chaussure (1967). Acrylic and sand on canvas. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

3. Domenico Gnoli, Italy

Included in the 'Italians Everywhere' room, which showcases Italian artists who lived abroad, is a large painting of a shoe by legendary stage designer and artist, Domenico Gnoli.

Sadly dying of cancer at only 36 years of age whilst living in New York, Gnoli's works from the 1960s often depict details of clothing and hair made uncanny through enlargement.

Painted in acrylic and sand, Sous la Chaussure (Under the shoe) (1967) is transformed into a delightful dance between pattern, colour, and surface texture.

Gnoli's compositions are unusual and strong, remaining fresh today. His influence can be seen in the work of two recently successful young painters: Julie Curtiss and Issy Wood. Gnoli is the OG though.

Kim Yun Shin, Selection of: 'Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One' (1979–1986). Wood. Dimensions variable. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

4. Kim Yun Shin, Korea

Born in Wonsan, in what is now North Korea, Kim Yun Shin established herself as one of Korea's first generation of woman sculptors. During the Korean War, she settled in Seoul with her mother. She then headed to Paris to study sculpture—a bold, and unusual move for a woman of her time and place—before returning to Seoul to teach, co-founding the Korea Sculptress Association to support emerging artists.

Enamoured of the wood she came across in Buenos Aires when visiting her niece in 1984, Kim moved to the South American city where she has lived for the past 40 years.

In Venice, Kim presents a group of eight sculptures, four made in wood between 1979 and 1986, and four in stone, produced between 1991 and 2001. The wooden totems recall American sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, yet unlike his interlocking, balanced sculptures, Kim's are one entity, modelled though dividing, splitting, and extracting.

In January 2024, Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery announced co-representation of Kim Yun Shin, marking Kim's first time with a commercial gallery in her six-decade career.

Ione Saldanha, Bambus (1960–70s). Acrylic on bamboo. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

5. Ione Saldanha, Brazil

Hanging front and centre of the exhibition was the work of late Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha (1919–2001).

Located in the section of the exhibition devoted to abstraction in the Global South, the work's palette of primary colours, rigid vertical and horizontal grids, focus on purity of form.

For Bambus (1960–70s), Saldanha harvested bamboo and dried it over a period of more than a year. The bamboo was then sanded down, coated in five layers of white paint before being pimped out in stripes of gaudy multi-colour horizontal stripes.

Individually attached and dangling from the ceiling, the bamboo subtly moves with the wind, which came out in full force as the biblical rain set in on the opening day of the Venice Biennale.

Rubem Valentim, Composição Bahia n.1 (1966). Tempera on canvas. Photo: Rory Mitchell, Ocula Advisory.

6. Rubem Valentim, Brazil

Rubem Valentim was a self-taught artist from Salvador in the Bahia region of Brazil. He is included in the section focusing on abstract artists from the Global South.

Although not widely known, his work is in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the São Paulo Museum of Art held a major survey of his work in 2018. Brazilian gallery Mendes Wood DM has also worked to build the artist's legacy for several years now.

Valentim creates images composed of abstract symbols or signs, which are geometric reductions of Orixá, or deities, from the Afro-Brazilian religions Candomblé and Umbanda.

Borrowing elements from constructivism and functioning as abstract paintings, it is Valentim's lively and surprising colour combinations that make these weird objects so wonderfully satisfying. —[O]