Raymond Hains - Venice

A dozen years after his death, Raymond Hains was again among the stars of the Venice Biennale 2017 with a central display in the main exhibition. Both the display and the glowing reviews proved the central place Hains holds in contemporary art practice, with his open conceptual approach that makes free use of places and materials, optical effects and wordplay, and various documentation strategies. In fact Hains had a long history with the city. He moved to Venice in 1964, remaining in Italy for the rest of the decade. Here he split his artistic personality into the characters Saffa and Seita, two fictional artists that took their names from the Italian and French national companies for tobacco. In the same year he also presented the Biennale dechiree (Torn Biennial) as lacerated posters on canvas, and in 1968 the Biennale eclatee (Shattered Biennial), for which he deformed the catalog covers of each nation through a prism and rendered it in plexiglas relief. Also including several mixed-media installations and a number of macintoshages - a work group started in the late 1990 for which the artist superimposed images on a computer screen - the book investigates Hains' fruitful relationship with Venice, guided by an essay from art historian and curator Herve Vanel.