06 Jul 2017

Claudia Fontes: The Horse Problem

Biennale di Venezia, Argentinean Pavilion, Arsenale

Reviewed by Rob Mackenzie

The Biennale show-stopper this year is a young lady and her horse.

Rising to the ceiling in a former Arsenale cannon foundry, Argentinian sculptor Claudia Fontes's lustrous, enormous stallion of resin and marble rears over a life-sized equestrienne amid the rocky rubble from which they both might have been been sculpted.

The suspended marble fragments combine to cast an irregular shadow on a nearby wall in the shape of a disintegrating beast. They dwarf a third figure, a hunched young boy trying to make sense of it all.

Echoes of viewers' footfalls in the cavernous space punctuate the unspoken tragedy of a beast whose survival has historically depended on its being exploited and whose time now seems past.

Freed from bridle, spur, and rider - unlike the countless bronze steeds in piazzas across Italy - and its life no longer inextricably linked linked to its master, the horse faces an uncertain future. Fontes and other artists here seem to say ours is uncertain as well.