One of a Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy

Entropy! A key term characterising the movement towards chaos – in physics, probability theory, sociology and information technology. The entropic end-state is nothing less than uniform oblivion, which recent art-theoretical discourse has associated with representations of melting and liquidification – an ocean of homogeneity.

The exhibition throws light on this inescapable tendency (declared to be the second law of thermodynamics), demonstrating that resistance to it can only be carried out by a creative person. Only creators give birth to life energy that is capable of creating improbable structures. The bearers of this power – artists, engineers, poets – are a small army, the guides of evolution, warriors with cosmic noise. In June they come together in a place where the concept of entropy takes on a strategic character: Venice, the sinking city.

Located in the Arsenale Novissimo (a former shipyard) One of a Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy is a fantastic machine, a vessel, sailing in the expanding cosmos of the imagination, leaving behind works in space that allow us – for a second at least – to doubt the inevitable domination of entropy.

The participating artists are internationally recognized as leading voices in contemporary culture. They have all exhibited in major public museums in both their home countries and abroad, and they are represented in important state and private collections. For One of a Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy each creates a new large-scale installation befitting the imposing renaissance industrial architecture of the Arsenale Novissimo.

For every artist, the technical and artistic ambition of their new work represents a career milestone.

Hans Op de Beeck debuts the latest in his acclaimed series of ‘total’ installations, Location 7: an immersive environment faithfully evoking a pathetic Western European suburban home and garden in grey monotone – within which every aspect, from furniture to blades of grass, is made of concrete. It is as if some Vesuvius has covered anywhere western Europe in ash. Op de Beeck was born in Turnhout, Belgium (1969), and lives and works in Brussels.

Adrian Ghenie unveils Duchamp Funeral 3, an eighteen-metre long, four-metre tall painterly collage depicting Marcel Duchamp’s corpse lying ‘in state’, like Vladimir Ilych Lenin in Red Square. Ghenie was born in Baia-Mare, Romania (1977). He lives and works in London and Berlin.

Ryoichi Kurokawa contributes Octfalls, a digital audio-visual work that consists of eight LCD screens and attendant speakers suspended from the ceiling of the Arsenale, arranged in an octagonal three-dimensional configuration. Oscillating footage of waterfalls and digital distortion whirls around the viewer with sound – producing a destabilizing and hallucinatory effect. Kurokawa was born in Osaka, Japan (1978). He lives and works in Berlin.

Alexander Ponomarev (b.1957) is represented by Formula. This work consists of two eight-metre high acrylic columns, each clear and hollow with a diameter of one and half metres, containing twelve metric tons of lagoon water. Within each, a kinetic futuro-automobile rises and falls in its vertical casket. Alexander Ponomarev was born in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia (1957). He lives and works in Moscow.

Image: Alexander Ponomarev, Baffin Figure, 2006. Performance, Baffin Sea. via Museum Publicity