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Curiosity, experimentation and provocation: that sums up this year’s Biennial in São Paulo. When it comes to art, New York and Venice have competition. The fringe programme also demonstrates it, including the biggest show ever of contemporary German painting. By Susann Kreutzmann

São Paulo’s art scene is in brimming with excitement. Brazilian art’s significance went long unrecognized, but things have changed. Today, São Paulo is considered South America’s New York. The art scene is more dynamic here than anywhere else on the continent. About 80 art galleries are now established in the Brazilian city and the numbers are growing steadily. “We’re presently experiencing a boom, but there is still a great deal of potential for growth,” corroborates Akio Aoki of the Vermelho art gallery in São Paulo, which represents 32 young Brazilian artists, “Today, it’s a must for every collector to own works by Brazilian artists.”

Berlin gallery proprietor Guido Baudach agrees. “Many of my colleagues see a lot of promise in São Paulo.” He himself is surprised at the diversity of the art scene, which he is experiencing during his first visit to the city. Certainly this reputation has been aided along by the Biennial, the world’s largest art exhibition after Venice’s.

“Art is the only revolutionary power.” This quote by Joseph Beuys seems made to be the motto of this year’s Biennial in São Paulo, Brazil’s city of 20 million. Curiosity, experimentation and provocation are the catchwords of the largest art show in Latin America. This year (until 13 December 2010), 159 artists from four continents are revealing their views of urbanity, identity and social drift. Among them are 16 artists from Germany.

From afar, the blazing white of the Biennial building designed by star architect Oscar Niemeyer shines at visitors. The art exhibition has been headquartered in Ibirapuera Park, a green island in the midst of the hectic and restless city, since 1951. On three floors of 250 metres long each, this year mainly installations, photos and objects can be seen. In a labyrinth of lanes, dark rooms and quiet places, visitors are allowed plenty of leeway for their own impressions. “Our idea was to create a Biennial with surprises that correspond with the modern building,” explains chief curator Agnaldo Farias.

Art meets politics

This year, the focus is primarily on the interplay between politics and art. “The Biennial is putting the political back in art,” says Farias. Even before the show, the Brazilian artist Gil Vicente caused fierce controversy with life-size images that show him murdering politicians such as the Iranian head of government Ahmadinejad, but even Brazil’s incumbent president Lula da Silva. The Brazilian bar association wanted to take legal action against the pictures, which curator Farias criticizes, however, as “attempted censorship.”

After a decade marked by the financial crisis, the Biennial has once again won the hearts of the Brazilian people. With almost 800 works of art, this year’s Biennial is also one of the largest ever. The organizers expect more than a million visitors. That would be a new record.

The fringe programme of the Biennial is also showing the most extensive exhibition of contemporary German painting ever. The exhibition in the famous building of the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo; until 9 January), organized in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, looks back at the past 20 years of the art scene in eastern and western Germany. “This art stands for a new generation,” says curator Tereza de Arruda in reference to artists from the Leipzig School such as Neo Rauch, David Schnell and Tim Eitel. Yet, painters from the West German artists’ movement of the Neue Wilde such as Jörg Immendorff, A.R. Penck and Martin Kippenberger are also represented. “It’s our job to present the entire bandwidth of contemporary painting. Art lives from diversity,” emphasizes de Arruda, who came to Berlin the year the wall fell and was able to experience the transformation of the city first hand.

When it’s Biennial time in São Paulo, the international art scene meets in the city, too. Therefore, a discussion organized by the Goethe-Institut with the artistic director of the 13th Documenta in Kassel, Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, and Lisette Lagnado, the curator of the Biennial in São Paulo four years ago, was very popular. There was a special honour this year for the “most important unknown German filmmaker” Harun Farocki, to whom a retrospective of 30 films was dedicated. In addition, Brazilian filmmaker Betty Leirner presented 30 diversified works on love, war and poetry in a retrospective. And, the project MCD Lab blinddate.de showed how creative and multifaceted life in Berlin clubs can be.