Independent curator and critic Jochen Volz has been tapped to organize Brazil’s pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, which opens in May 2017.
“Sharing the event’s faith in the transformative potential of art and culture,” said Volz in an announcement, “I am convinced that we are going to put together a show that will dialogue fully with the present concerns of artists the world over.”
São Paulo–based Volz, 45, recently oversaw a team of curators organizing that city’s 32nd Bienal, “Incerteza Viva” (Live Uncertainty). artnet News’s Eileen Kinsella described it as a memorable exhibition with some commanding works, while Art in America‘s Brian Droitcour was more skeptical, suggesting that the exhibition’s theme of uncertainty “sounds like an alibi for international curators who look at too much of everything to really believe in anything.”
Volz’s résumé includes terms as program director at London’s Serpentine Galleries, curator at Frankfurt’s Portikus, and artistic director of Brazil’s Inhotim Institute. Among his other endeavors as an independent curator, he was one of many contributors to Daniel Birnbaum’s international art exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), titled “Making Worlds.”
The 57th Venice Biennale takes place May 13–November 26, 2017. The Brazilian pavilion, built in 1964, has since 1995 hosted exhibitions jointly overseen by that government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the foundation that oversees the São Paulo Bienal. Luiz Camillo Osorio served as the pavilion’s curator for the 2015 Venice Biennale, exhibiting artists André Komatsu, Antonio Manuel, and Berna Reale.