Katja Novitskova. If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes

The Venice Biennale has been over for a few weeks. What stood out most in this edition curated by Christine Macel? It is widely known that it’s not very easy to be able to combine all the audience’s tastes, as uneven as the general public that follows and attends an institutional event like the Venice Biennale.
So, having to wait two years to enjoy a new edition, we take a step back in the lagoon and see what surprised us the most. If the quality of an international exhibition such as the Biennale should be measured with its level of contemporaneity, there is a pavilion that has distinguished itself, but it is neither in the gardens nor in the Arsenale.

Katja Novitskova, If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, 2017. Installation view. Estonian Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Many of us expect a Venice Biennale able to look to our present, but we have not reached this level yet. So, lost in a fascinating lagoon we rather pay attention to the new generation inside and outside the Arsenale and the Giardini. We can find a series of young artists recognized by international art institutions and gatekeepers unanimously. They are increasingly emerging and some of them are giving the Venice Biennale a chance to regain the present. Luckily, there are small countries that aren’t as overly chauvinistic as the bigger nations, which have always occupied the garden pavilions. These small countries are able to make a “critical census” by looking at which young artists are under their belt, and are able to compete with the great names of contemporary art.

This is the reason why the LVII Venice Biennale impresses us: out of its historical epicenter, it surprises us in those external pavilions, which find space in the damp and ancient buildings, hidden in tight streets and old squares, the Campi and the Calle of Serenissima. And so, following the main road that leads us from the Arsenale to Palazzo Grassi, quite by accident, we arrive in front of Palazzo Malipiero. This building dates back to the Byzantine age and now houses the Estonian Pavilion, which exhibits “If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes” by young artist Katja Novitskova. A solo-exhibition curated by Kati Ilves, that winds through the old building from the ground floor to the bathroom, along the corridor and in the dark rooms: the shutters are closed, not even allowing visitors a look out onto the Grand Canal. The feeling is to drop into a narrow hospital, a small clinic where time stopped.

Katja Novitskova, If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, 2017. Installation view. Estonian Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Nowadays, new digital images, in their perpetual circulation between online and offline reality, are merciful and reviving in support of this system, which reconfigures our visual imagery following the aesthetic conduct that is promoted by the Internet. We have reached our full maturity as the first digital natives to produce unreleased images for the general public. This phenomenon is the heir of digital aesthetics of merely commercial derivation. In fact, in the last years, we have often talked about Post-Internet, and Katja Novitskova has often been associated with this aesthetic. Post-Internet doesn’t necessarily relate to Internet art, rather it prefers a configuration in physical art, such as video, installations or sculptures, able to place itself in the gallery’s exhibition space, the white cube.

Katja Novitskova, If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, 2017. Installation view. Estonian Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Katja Novitskova is a young Estonian artist, born in 1984. She has often been considered the godmother of Post-Internet, gaining a great international success in recent years. Images can be stored and manipulated by computers as well as another kind of data. With appropriate graphics programs, you can resize them, crop, combine and modify them in a thousand different ways. The title of the exhibition is a quotation from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). It explores the radical articulation of the “role of the image”, wondering how the constant global mediation acquires an ecological dimension; so, Natiskova combs through the relationship between the visual domain, the large data-processing industries, and ecology in times of botanical crisis.

Katja Novitskova, If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, 2017. Installation view. Estonian Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Novitskova’s artworks are characterized by large installations made of digital prints on aluminum supports. In fact, in the hall of Palazzo Malipiero there is a great metallic jaguar ready to welcome us. Going upstairs, we find ourselves in front of big eggs, worms and reptiles, everything is immersed in a play of lights and shadows, reflections and projections. In another room, there are two large installations that represent bees and flies working on honeycombs by artificial form. A polar bear, symbol of extinction, seems to look at us. From the top falls a cascade of cables and electrical wires. In a dark bath, covered with turquoise 1960s tiles, a giant foul earthworm emerges from the bathtub. It seems to protrude and stretch up to reach the ceiling. In the adjoining room, there are a series of electronic baby swings as mechanical sculptures that wobble in a gentle rhythm, but with artificial and sinister noise. Machines are decorated with plexiglass shapes reminiscent of the wings of an insect, like reproducing a new autogenous biotechnological species.

Katja Novitskova, If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, 2017. Installation view. Estonian Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Digital images are known for their versatility of use inside and outside the web space, due to their exponential manipulation possibilities. They run out of the interface to represent for us a company of a purely commercial nature. These images circulate as goods, and we are hardly able to dispose of them. Each digital image is connected to the other because they can be assembled, contaminated, played, copied and shared on the web. We can scroll them on our Facebook page. We are no longer able to pay attention to the single image, we can only grasp their multiplicity creating a new nature. This is predominantly the art of Katja Novitskova.