From Deep Dish To Bad Art

Financial Times

By Clare Henry

March 5 2006

Since 1932 the Whitney Biennial has been the premier showcase for contemporary American artists. This year is different. “We are no longer interested in whether they are American or not,” said a spokesman. The Biennial is now an international free-for-all for sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, film, performance and installation.

First impressions? There is substantial overlap and blurring of media, with a new emphasis on music and sound, more anti- establishment “Bad Art”, more older artists, less painting and, to my surprise, little overt political comment. About half of this Biennial consists of video/film works, too many of a monotonous character. Michael Snow’s “Sheeploop” sheep graze, Jim O’Rourke’s “Door” clangs, Mason and Thater’s synchronised skippers skip.

On the other hand, some recently dead artists, such as Ed Paschke or Steven Parrino, radiate energy: Paschke’s 2004 psychedelic oils of dictatorial faces are especially remarkable. Indeed, without the oldies, outspoken political comment would be negligible. This year’s Biennial is said to be about the zeitgeist but, to the average visitor, it largely ignores our troubled times.

It takes senior citizens such as Mark di Suvero and Richard Serra, or the deceased such as Warhol and Weegee, to hit out at war and abuse, violence and terrorism. Serra is represented by the original brutalist painting for his 2004 poster of a hooded figure wired for electrocution that became a symbol of US misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison.

Warhol, Weegee and others feature in “Down by Law”, a strangely surreptitious show within a show that draws on the Whitney’s permanent collection. It presents gritty work including “mug shots and twisted icons, both celebrating and degrading the dark heroes of the American Dream”. Among these lonesome warriors, several 1930s drawings of lynchings are as powerful as anything in the Biennial proper.

Di Suvero’s “Peace Tower” was first created in 1966 as a protest against the Vietnam war. But the Whitney version lacks any real anger. The contributing artists’ sloppily hand-painted slogans read: “No happy ending”, “Stop Bushonomics”, “Drink to forget”, “Piece of shit”, “Do not disturb”. As one panel says: “Like man, I’m tired.”

In the introduction to the cumbersome catalogue, the curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne confirm that the 99 foldout images it contains are done in “a spirit of absurdity” and will defy “the logic of knowledge structure”. Yet many of this year’s exhibits cannot support the pretentious claims made for them.

Consider Urs Fischer’s hole in the wall, for example. Fischer, a Swiss, has taken the Whitney apart with serious intent, removing two 40ft pieces of steel and sheetrock. This is not a new trick. Richard Wilson and others have been deconstructing museum walls and floors for at least two decades. Fischer’s second offering is two suspended branches with burning candles on the ends that slowly form a wax circle on the floor. Nearby stands Dan Colen’s boulder covered with graffiti, chewing gum and bird droppings, and Nari Ward’s sunbed embellished with oil barrels. I looked for help from the curators. “The best way to appreciate Fischer’s work is in silence,” they said.

Most of the six floors of exhibits, more than 500 artworks if one includes “Down by Law” (66 works by 54 artists) plus the 200 in the “Peace Tower”, come in such scattered form that it is hard to work out who did what. Confusion, both in relation to the art and the show, is the name of the game.

Happily the fourth floor contains a more segregated section with Anne Collier’s nicely minimal photos separated from Deva Graf’s messy plinths and mirrors, and Jennie Smith’s enchanting and fanciful “Kite Wars” drawings from Lucas DeGiulio’s gimmicky green bottles and Josephine Meckseper’s banal vitrines. Here you can find Troy Brauntuch’s Richteresque but compelling large conte crayon images of shirts that loom from gloomy depths. These neat piles of collars and cuffs are as exquisitely rendered as J.P. Munro’s oil painting, “Orgy Chamber”, is badly drawn, badly composed and badly executed. Others who fall into this rebellious “Bad Art” category include Miles David, Todd Norsten, Dash Snow, Spencer Sweeney, Chris Vasell and Matt Monahan with his ugly floral foam objects. This is not ironic subversion or clever spoof, just plain poor work.

The fourth floor ends with a section colour-coded black: Jutta Koether’s studenty black and silver glitter fades into nothingness next to Parrino’s energetic “misshaped paintings” and 80-year-old Kenneth Anger’s vibrant installation centred on his most recent animated film featuring a sublime silver Mickey Mouse.

There are of course memorable exhibits: Rodney Graham’s “Torqued Chandelier” film, Marilyn Minter’s super-realist high heels and Paul Chan’s magical “1st Light” digital animation projected on the floor. Here a telegraph pole with sinuous wires is silhouetted centre stage while around it everyday objects – sunglasses, cell phones, a car – float upwards, out of gravity’s grip. This dreamlike quality is refreshing, although I would not, as the catalogue does, liken it to a rapturous religious experience.

Black art and black history are poorly represented, but Jamal Cyrus, Dawolu Anderson and their collaborative group, Otabenga Jones, highlight the complexities of representing black issues in undiluted form. Other collaboratives (better-funded and connected than Jones) include Francesco Vezzoli’s spoof Caligula film trailer funded by Prada and DTAOT: “Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty”. Here Dan Graham, Tony Oursler and others create a lavish rock opera puppet concert in high-definition video.

Relegated to the basement by the café is Deep Dish Television’s display. This, the original alternative network founded in the mid-1980s, has produced 12 programmes of news coverage on Iraq, some using footage shot by Iraqis themselves. It is a sobering indictment of global democracy at gunpoint and on its own makes the Biennial essential viewing.

Whitney Biennial 2006, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until May 28.
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