For those of us that love art and music, there’s a lot of time spent racing around in life. I’ve always been fond of chillout rooms, these 90s rave inventions where one could sit and decompress from the Room 1 of a party.
Biennales often lack these spaces. There’s cafes and bars, but sometimes I want an art space that also serves as a chillout room. Jakub Ferri’s vibrant tapestries serve as that in the Arsenale this year. Nestled in a nook of country pavilions, you enter this pop culture laden fantasy of bright graphics, animated characters, and distant childhood references. And then you sit down and experience them. There’s so much to observe the eye does not know where to begin or end. Instead it is easy to watch others interact in the fantasy, attaining joy in the comforting respite, gasping for a few moments to relax between the back to back sensory overload that is the high the Biennale rides like few other shows in the world.