Mona Hatoum and Robert Rauschenberg in Venice

Some of the more interesting exhibitions can be seen outside the Venice Biennale

Interior Landscape by Mona Hatoum, at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, is without doubt one of the better ones.

Curated by Chiara Bertola, the shows features almost 30 works, presented in the contemporary exhibition spaces of the third floor, as well as in the second floor of the historic building, formerly the home of the Querini Stampalia family, where Mona Hatoum has created several interventions in a subtle dialogue with the museum's collection.

Human hair, leather bust, wood
27 x 21 x 16 cm

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum is also currently showing a series of works by Robert Rauschenberg in an exhibition called Gluts. A little cheaper than an airfare to Venice can be had by going on a virtual tour of the museum.

http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/exhibitions/virtual_tour/rauschenberg_4/rauschenberg.html
The exhibition is a select group of forty sculptural works begun in 1986 and continued intermittently until 1995. Rauschenberg’s artistic attention in the 1980s turned toward an exploration of the visual properties of metal. He assembled found metal objects such as gas-station signs, deteriorated automotive and industrial parts littering the landscape, and transformed the scrap-metal detritus into wall reliefs and freestanding sculptures.

What is a glut? The series Gluts was inspired by a visit to Houston in the mid 1980s, when the Texas economy was in the throes of a recession due to a glut (or surplus of supply) in the oil market that Rauschenberg took note of. Asked to comment on the meaning of the Gluts, Rauschenberg offered: “It’s a time of glut. Greed is rampant. I’m just exposing it, trying to wake people up. I simply want to present people with their ruins. I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its many possibilities might be."