Welcome to Week in Review, our Sunday round-up of the last 7 days of activity here at Contemporary Art Daily. This week was focused on the Venice Biennale, our first coverage of a contemporary art event. Including 7 individual exhibitions and extensive documentation of selections from the survey exhibition, we brought you a variety of engaging work from Venice. As this was our first time doing live coverage, we’re eager to hear your feedback. What could we have done better? What would you like to see next time?

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Event Coverage:

Venice: Arsenale, Part 1

Venice: Arsenale, Part 2

Venice: The Palazzo at the Giardini, Part 1

Venice: The Palazzo at the Giardini, Part 2

Venice: The Palazzo at the Giardini, Part 3

This week’s featured exhibitions:

Bruce Nauman at the U.S. Pavilion

Lucas Samaras at the Greek Pavilion

Roman Ondak at the Slovak Pavilion

Haegue Yang at the Korean Pavilion

Martin Boyce at the Palazzo Pisani

Liam Gillick at the German Pavilion

James Lee Byars at the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava

Be sure to e-mail us with any tips, observations or complaints and comment on the shows you feel strongly about. Have an excellent week.

The Palazzo at the Giardini is a large exhibition hall at one end of the Giardini, the garden home of the national pavilions, in Venice. The Palazzo is one of the two main venues for the survey component of the Biennale, and includes a frantic-looking cafe designed by Tobias Rehberger. Curated by the director of this year’s Biennale, Daniel Birnbaum, the exhibition is called “Making Worlds” and includes a wide variety of artists.

There were many compelling sections of the Palazzo, but we’ve broken down nine key selections into three parts. Part 3 features contributions by Blinky Palermo, Simon Starling and Tony Conrad.

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“Himmelsrichtungen” by Blinky Palermo was originally made in 1976 and reconstructed for “Making Worlds” this year. Four colored plastic panels are mounted high in the corners of a small, brick-walled room on black I-beams. A few documents hung on the wall documenting the original installation and it’s production. It’s a welcome grounding for the rest of the show, and a sensitive articulation of the exhibition’s theme.

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Tony Conrad filled a tall room with paintings on unstable paper. The slow yellowing of the paper is related to experimental film.

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Simon Starling included a film installation, a big projector with an elaborate spiral of arms holding the film. The black and white film showed footage of what looked like various stages of production of the projection apparatus.

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Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images available after the jump.

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Artist: James Lee Byars

Venue: Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Venice

Exhibition Title: James Lee Byars Lived Here

Date: June 4 – July 5, 2009

Note: There were no press images documenting the exhibition immediately available, so the photos are all by Contemporary Art Daily. We apologize for any poor quality, as we do not have access to a professional photographer.

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

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