Simone Leigh, Brick House, 2019 

There are exhibitions which, because of their energy, have the capacity to altogether transform the image of an artistic movement for an entire generation. This year’s Venice Art Biennale is an event of this sort, and its main show is a demonstration of how nostalgia and the market – ever ready to come up with new fashions – are able to bring back many things, as now with surrealism. In search of an idea that would tie history to the present, the Italian curator Cecilia Alemani has refrained from putting herself above the changing and coarse levels of style that swamp the contemporary panorama of art...[+]