admin @ Sun, 2006-03-05 09:00
We are in a moment in art history when there are no stars on the contemporary scene. Nowhere is there a powerful personality, a Picasso or a Pollock or even a Julian Schnabel to put a smoking brand on today's art.
The job of explaining what's going on falls to curators. So it is with the just-opened 2006 Whitney Biennial, an exhibit that gamely takes on today's slippery zeitgeist and, with the aid of 102 mostly unknown artists, comes up with some tantalizing readings on our cultural whereabouts.
Aesthetically, of course, it's a mess, as are all the Whitney Biennials. This is not the kind of show you'd go to if you had only a month to live and wanted spiritual solace. It's not about beauty or any of the timeless values found in the great art of the past.
This Biennial, according to co-curator Chrissie Iles, explores an American culture "preoccupied with the irrational, the religious, the dark, the erotic and the violent, filtered through a sense of flawed beauty."
The show's full title, "Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night," refers to a 1973 film by Francois Truffaut and to the cinematic technique of shooting night scenes artificially during the day, using a special filter. Today's artists, according to the exhibit's other curator, Philippe Vergne, inhabit a stylistic twilight zone, uncertain of where they are along the continuum of pre-modernism to postmodernism.
This is the most political Biennial in recent memory. The Iraq war and opposition to the Bush administration has galvanized artists to a degree not seen since the 1960s. In fact, one of the show's signature pieces, erected in the outdoor sculpture court in front of the museum, is "Peace Tower," by Mark di Suvero and Rirkrit Tiravanija, a re-creation of a 1966 work by Di Suvero in protest against the Vietnam War. Now, as then, individual artists have contributed their own messages on wooden panels that hang on the outside of the tower.
The exhibit also has the original drawing by Richard Serra for his "Stop Bush" poster, which makes use of an infamous photograph of a hooded prisoner of war standing with outstretched arms.
Another anti-war work, "Shocking and Awful," comes from Deep Dish Television Network, an alternative satellite network, and consists of segments on Iraq from more than 100 independent filmmakers and activist groups.
Whitney Biennials usually start with a bang, and this one almost literally does. Visitors coming off the elevator on the fourth floor enter and exit the first gallery by stepping through what look like explosion holes in the plasterboard walls. Inside, two branches twirl from the end of chains, a burning candle at the end of each. Both holes and branches are by Urs Fischer, who gives no specific clues to their meaning, though the holes certainly suggest acts of terrorism.
For every work in this show that recalls '60s activism, there are others that reflect the esoteric, theory-driven styles of postmodernism. In this mode of thinking, everything is clouded and uncertain.
These hard-core postmodernists also seem to favor one-word names. The artist Carter makes ghostly collages in which photographs of faces are drawn over with pen or disguised by layers of cut-out paper, rendering the subjects unrecognizable. One artist in the show doesn't even exist: Reena Spaulings is a fictional artist whose works are made by a shifting group of collaborators. The artist Momus, who moves anonymously through the galleries discussing the works, bills himself as an "Unreliable Tour Guide."
Doubt is at the core of Sturtevant's installation, "Duchamp 1200 Coal Bags," in which the artist has fabricated a dozen of Duchamp's ready-mades -- including the famous urinal -- works that already questioned the notion of the original artwork.
The big attention-getter in this show is Francesco Vezzoli's "Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula," which is a false preview for a remake of the notorious '70s movie, based on the life of the depraved Roman emperor. The original was an attempt at a mainstream pornographic film. Vezzoli's trailer is a parody and a critique of Hollywood values, but, like the original, doesn't skimp on the sex.
Kinky sex is found in the work of Monica Majoli, who uses watercolor to make softly diffused images of a man dressed in a fetishistic rubber suit. Marilyn Minter's heavily made-up eyes, glistening open lips and stiletto heels underscore the tawdry, ripped-stocking side of eroticism.
Billy Sullivan has been chronicling the art, fashion and celebrity scenes of New York for four decades. His piece, "1969-2005," consists of three simultaneous slide projections, with a background track of nostalgic piano music. On the side walls are images of gay men, people in drugged or drunken states and scenes from parties, fashion shoots and theatrical productions. These images have a decadent Andy Warhol ambience about them. There's a more seductive sensibility at work in the center-wall sequence, taken in the '70s, of a young woman in a hotel room, posing nude or in a gold lame skirt.
The Whitney Biennial is an overwhelmingly youthful exhibit that always has a few old-timers in it. One of this exhibit's seniors is the octogenarian poet, performer, artist and actor Taylor Mead. He was active in the Beat scene of the '50s and later starred in numerous Warhol films, and is represented here by a naughty 10-panel fairy tale.
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