New Work: ‘Gloria’
The United States is represented at this year’s Venice Biennale by Gloria, a striking installation by the artist team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed the catalogue for the exhibition, one of the Biennale’s controversial highlights.
Based in Puerto Rico, Allora & Calzadilla’s work is known for its political edge and subversive humor. Installed in the U.S. Pavilion, Gloria is a broad commentary on U.S. nationalism, consumerism and global competitiveness on the international stage (including art biennials). Its works include Track and Field, a performance in which U.S. Olympian Dan O’Brien runs on a treadmill placed on an upside-down tank; Body in Flight (American) and Body in Flight (Delta), in which teams of gymnasts perform routines on the first- and business-class seats of the two airlines; and Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed, a replica of Armed Freedom, the neo-Classical statue from the dome of the U.S. Capitol, placed in a tanning bed.
Miller’s design for Gloria embraces the exhibition’s Surrealist tendencies, an association that is drawn out in curator Lisa D. Freiman’s catalogue essay. As senior curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Freiman and the IMA were selected to produce the Allora & Calzadilla exhibition based on the proposal they jointly created. (Miller previously designed the IMA identity.)
The team designed the book’s front sections—a critical essay and interview with the artists—in advance of receiving photographs of the performances and installations in situ at the Biennale, which opened on June 1. The exhibition was photographed for the catalogue by the artist and photographer Andrew Bordwin.
The cover of the book features the bold, blank face of Armed Freedom as an enigmatic representation of the exhibition title. The bold sans serif capitals that dot the essays are set in a font called Wilma, and the body copy is, appropriately, Dada Grotesk.
Project Team: Abbott Miller, partner-in-charge and designer; Kim Walker, designer.