The Irish Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Corban Walker, the official Irish representative at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, will present three new, site-specific sculptural installations at the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaíon.

Walker is known for his sculptures and installations relating to architectural scale and spatial perception and utilizing industrial materials like steel, aluminum, and glass. Standing only four feet tall, Walker explores minimalism from his unique point of view. The installations respond to rule-based, mathematical principles that derive from Walker’s own height and correlate to the experience of navigating a world that has been designed for others.The works at the Pietà interact with the historic architecture of the Pavilion and are all, in some way, transparent. It intrigued Walker that the Pavilion is open at both ends, with each end offering a different destination, the canal or a garden. There is no front or back, and no beginning or end. In the past, Walker has used transparent materials like glass and Plexiglas to create sculptures; this time, the installation itself will be transparent though the actual materials — metal and vinyl — are opaque.

Modular (2011)

This work covers parts of the outside windows of the Pietà with blue vinyl according to a mathematical rule that takes Walker’s height, 1290 millimeters, as the starting point for a mathematical formula that dictates the negative and positive space in the windows.

Transparent Wall (2011)

This work uses the interior windows of the Pietà to “blast out” the window panes and create a drawing over the panes made out of black vinyl squares arranged according to specific mathematical rules relating to the size and location of each square, projected in three dimensions and rendered in two dimensions. The result appears chaotic or random, but is actually dictated by a disciplined principle.

Please Adjust (2011)

This sculpture consists of 160 interlocking stainless steel cubes, each made of beams with a width of four millimeters (as dictated by Walker’s height of four feet). The open frame cubes are interlocked to build a structure that can support itself. It can be altered or adjusted in each new installation, but the consequences of those adjustments can destroy the entire structure. “Please Adjust” represents a rare instance when Walker created work in direct response to an event — the global financial crisis. The work responds to a prevailing sense of helplessness, as well as the sensation that one person’s actions can have broad consequences that lead to adjustments of expectations in life and in art. “Over the past three years we have all experienced some catastrophic exposure to the actions of people whom we have no control over, and yet each of us is paying for their mistakes,” explains Walker.

“The work is very much about architecture, and the practice of installation has very strong connections with architecture,” Walker has said of his practice. “Though the work is very minimal, the materials are very ‘hard’ — but at the same time the works appear quite delicate and the structures can feel fragile or precarious. Though the sculptures are minimalist, they are also quite theatrical. They require, they demand in fact, the participation of the viewer. This aspect is particularly significant in considering the relationship of the work or installation to the building, to the venue. In this way the work can be read without reference to me and in terms of its theatricality. The work exercises the viewers in considering their relationships with themselves and in how they participate and communicate with their own surroundings.”

The Irish Pavilion is overseen by commissioner Emily-Kane Kirwan and curated by Eamonn Maxwell, the director of Lismore Castle Arts in County Waterford, Ireland.

Corban Walker (b. 1967, Dublin), graduated with honors from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture in 1992. He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in Ireland and

abroad, and has produced eight public commissions worldwide. The Pace Gallery presented the first New York exhibition devoted to Walker’s work in 2000 and has represented the artist since 2005.

Read additional note on the exhibition by Eamonn Maxwell [Curator]

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