We Must Risk Delight:
Twenty Artists from Los Angeles
la Biennale di Venezia, Biennale Arte

Exhibition Dates: May 9 – November 22, 2015

la Biennale di Venezia, Biennale Arte 2015
Magazzino del Sale No.3
Dorsoduro 264, Venezia
Italy

Presented in collaboration with Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia

We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles is an exhibition that presents, for the first time on the international stage, a group of exceptional contemporary Los Angeles artists whose work makes Los Angeles one of the most exciting hubs of creativity in the world today.

We Must Risk Delight is inspired by the poem A Brief for the Defense by a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist, Jack Gilbert. In his viscerally visual poem, Gilbert calls on humanity to recognize every moment of delight even in the most ominous of impressions. By slicing through the somber depictions of the world we live in with sharp and vibrant moments of joy, the poet presents an irrefutable case for our happiness as being our most requisite expression of freedom, not in spite of the cruelty that is a part of our world, but because of it.

A work of art represents the artist’s vision of the world and, when embraced, it can be seen as a way of making a world. The artists presented in We Must Risk Delight will give the audiences of the Biennale Arte 2015 an opportunity to discover the city of Los Angeles through the kaleidoscope of its creative community, while also encouraging us all to risk delight and celebrate the act of creating as humanity’s pathway to joy: both within ourselves and in the collective world around us.

We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles is being presented as an official Collateral Event of the 56th manifestation of la Biennale di Venezia, Biennale Arte 2015.

Presented Artists:
Brandy Eve Allen
Tanya Batura
Jamison Carter
Carolyn Castaño
Robbie Conal
Kenturah Davis
Amir H. Fallah
Alexandra Grant
Margaret Griffith
Sherin Guirguis
Ben Jackel
Mark Licari
Rebecca Niederlander
Stas Orlovski
Natasa Prosenc Stearns
Tony de los Reyes
Frank Ryan
Shizu Saldamando
Carole Silverstein
Alexis Zoto