Three Correlations
WB 2014

Otomo – Hughes – Silv
March 2014

Yuko Otomo

A definition of “what art is” keeps changing, expanding its limit. It has become more and more inclusive, open and diverse over the years. Here, in the 2014 Biennial, we see hybrids of art and culture in various forms and manifestations. As I walk through it, I can’t stop the feeling of being in the Museum of American Visual Culture rather than of American Art. Art used to be a part of culture, but now, it’s as if culture itself is claiming its identity as art. Am I too strict and orthodox in my thinking? I keep pondering thoughts on art and visual culture, how they overlap and differ from each other.

Pushing its limit, the definition of “being American” also keeps changing, not just Americans living in and out of America, but also non-Americans who live in America are considered American now. With 103 artists and 3 curators (2 men and 1 woman) mapping the new geography of art, this 77th Biennial will be the last to take place in the Breuer building at 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.

I don’t know how many times I have crossed this stone bridge and how many art experiences I’ve enjoyed in this building, including most of the past Biennials. I never liked the first floor because it always makes me feel like being in a hotel lobby. But I love the stairs and stairwells that make me feel like I am in a medieval castle or a convent with a meditative coolness and a sense of private-ness there, regardless of the season. And a window… When you leave a familiar place for good, it’s hard not to feel a bit melancholic and nostalgic.

* * *

The Biennial has always been playing a role of a survey on the state and trend of American Art “Now.” It is a social study of sorts, since art does reflect the world it lives in. Both aesthetic and social curiosities accompany us when we go through it. Every 2 years, we see ourselves reflected in art, accurately or not.

To curate, you need to have a good sense of balance, not just an aesthetic one but also a pragmatic one to understand how the limited space (and resources) works. 3 curators in 3 floors. 2 museum professionals from other institutions and one academician/artist/activist for alternative art spaces. Naturally, each floor has an independent tension in the air, reflecting the personality, philosophy and taste of each curator.

I roam through each floor, with no fixed thoughts on anything particular, just to take in what’s there. No matter, a sense of crowded-ness, both physical and psychic, is evident on each floor. Being “American,” 3 floors carry the utopian idealism of democracy and fairness, bringing in the utmost sense of “inclusiveness” as much as possible. Over the years, the Biennial has reflected many aspects of social issues such as race, gender, politics, in striving to correct the imbalanced and unfair realities. This year’s focus is on old artists and dead artists, and it has the biggest number of woman artists participating in its history.(*)

With a variety of practices, genres, political issues, aesthetic and historical agendas all mixed in, every floor is busy in one way or the other. Whether it’s an object or an idea, every art emanates a psychic energy. Displaying different types of art in one limited space causes a dense crisscrossing of psychic energies, often killing one another to the point of becoming indigestible. I know well that a Biennial is never meant to be for contemplation, but seeing descriptions on each of the title labels near all the art everywhere is bothersome.

The most noticeable characteristic of this Biennial is the diversity of materials used for art. Ceramic, textile/fabric, wood, metal, plastic, paper, canvas, LED screens; the list goes on. The revival of traditional materials shows how humanity, being saturated in a hi-tech environment, is yearning for something more tactile. “Hybrid” art is a norm here, not a shock of the new. It is interesting to see how our value system of senses changes; art forms, such as a multi-media installation and video art, look outdated, as traditional materials such as ceramic and wood look fresh and new.

Another characteristic is “printed or written matter” on display. Slightly different from the way words are treated generally in conceptual art, a letter-pressed poem, the rack of poetry books, notebooks and other archival materials ask us to treat them as art. How far can the boundary be pushed? Physically, psychically, conceptually, methodically, materially crowded, this exhibition shows almost everything we have now relating to art. Where do we go from this point of “openness” to? In 2016, in the new space by the mighty Hudson, the 78th Biennial will take place. What will it be like, I wonder?

* * *

My personal favorite works are Charlemagne Palestine’s 12 channel sound installation with stuffed animals and fabrics in the stairwells; Zoe Leonard’s window magic of streets outside projected ghostly in the darkened room, an oasis in the building; a small corner room for the oldest participant, the poet/artist, Etel Adnan; and the devotional self-existence of Sheila Hicks’ fiber art. The most heartbreaking event is Robert Ashley’s passing that took place just before the opening of the Biennial.

(*) Correction:
Nancy Azara pointed out my mistake & kindly provided me the correct information. The largest participation (52 %) took place in 2010. This year, as a matter of fact, it declined to 32 %.

Christine Hughes

By various estimates there are between 60 and 300 biennials worldwide, and the number seems to be growing daily. Each biennial (which is by definition a show of contemporary art) has at least one curator, usually more. Where are all these curators coming from? And what is their role in the current art market?

In early days a curator’s role was usually someone who worked at a museum and took “care” of the work, studied it, maybe wrote a bit and sometimes collated an exhibit. This role has been shifting. The numbers are mushrooming. Curators and artists are switching roles. Wonder why so many of the “artists” in this show chose instead of presenting their own work to “curate” someone else’s stuff??

With the advent of conceptual art the artists’ role moved from maker of things to thinker, then maybe maker secondarily or maybe someone else (assistant) could do the making. Then with appropriation the artist began borrowing, combining images and redefining. Now, we are all bombarded with images from everywhere. Gathering, sorting, categorizing, counting, and making sense of.

Take an apple, place an orange next to it and see what happens. The red shifts, the textures become more noticeable, the shapes redefine each other, orange being rounder etc.

When Marcel Duchamp elevated a urinal to the status of art by way of signing and exhibiting it, it was genius.

Boris Groys in The Curator as Iconoclast writes, “The curator may exhibit, but doesn’t have the magical ability to transform non-art into art through the act of display.” That was then. Seems to me the line is being redrawn in this years’s Biennial.

The Whitney chose 3 people to curate this Biennial and each of them chose their list of artists, some of which in turn chose to “curate” their own installations of other artists work and ephemera. Be forewarned, there is a lot of reading to do!

I heard each curator’s statement and also read what they wrote about their personal vision and thinking. Anthony Elms, whose statement is refreshing in it’s openness, has in my mind come the closest to his mission statement, looking to the Marcel Brauer building as a “meditation for capturing 24 scenes of America.” His choice for the stairway is the music of Charlemagne Palestine, whose transformed speakers cloaked in calico and shamanic stuffed animals emit earthy dronings. Mesmerizing and Brilliant work. The camera obscura of Zoe Leonard (which although it’s on the fourth floor is an Elms’ inclusion) is a wonderful nod to Marcel Brauer and gives the impression that buildings are both etherial and have a poetry of movement. It is a kind of physical magic, timeless, wireless, almost bleached of color. soothing and engaging. A ghostly goodbye to the current building as home to the Whitney.

I am intrigued by the work of Susan Howe. Poems which become more visual because of obfuscation. Words on a page, not all needing to be read. (Maybe by this time I can’t read anymore anyway..)

Third floor; Stuart Comer is a master at organizing and presenting work. Each artist is honored with enough space and enough work for us to get a sense of their “vocabulary.” The energy changes from area to area. Etel Adnan’s room shows one large, and many smaller paintings, and several vitrines holding folded scrolls done in watercolor and inks. Uri Aran has a video reminiscent of John Baldasari’s Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, but musical. His piece is poetry.

Stuart Comer says “I have been compelled by artists whose work is as hybrid as the significant global, environmental, and technological shifts reshaping the United States.” None of the hybrid work is startlingly new, so it rests on the merit of the actual work as opposed to the newness of the medium. Most of this work is lacking either visual interest or once we decipher it, there is no desire to ever revisit it.

Michelle Grabner has chosen the most artists, 36 plus, and seems vigorous about inclusion. Her floor is a sampling of work by artists who for the most part are in their work getting their hands dirty. An homage to artists creating as much as to the final product piece of art. I think there are some pretty good paintings, but I have difficulty seeing them. Most of the large paintings are presented in pairs. I would prefer one painting with some breathing room around it. I feel like I am viewing a matched set of salt and pepper shakers, each slightly different than the other, but in relation only to each other and not with the work next to it.

I’m delighted to see that her video room is not the curtained darkened room everyone else sends us into, tripping over our fellow museum goers. We all watch movies, youtube, videos in daylight all the time now…

The statement she wrote mentions “pedagogy and curriculum for other artists, a fourth floor curriculum.” She has included fiber arts, ceramic work, women who make large abstract paintings, even a vitrine with David Foster Wallace’s notebooks? I would be very interested to read a bit about why each artist was chosen, less about affect theory and materiality.

Its an onerous job to have to go and select artist work to represent what is happening now in American Art, and as we all know the WB generally is pretty controversial. And for good reason. Critics sensationalize the identity of who was included and who was left out, the number of women, people of color, sexual orientation, age..

Then there is the curator’s written statement or unwritten agenda.

Generally most of the work in this Biennial is not very interesting. There is a bit of reinventing the wheel, way too much show and tell going on, which demands too much from the viewer and after all our reading and prodding leaves us with nothing to take away.

I do love the boundaries being blurred, the materiality of the show, the sense we get that there is a lot of art being made. If we can just keep the curation to a minimum allowing the artist to remain front and center.

Randee Silv

Each of the three invited curators brought specific twists and notions of how to define contemporary art for the 77th time. I’m sure visitors will most likely be coming with theirs to the Whitney Biennial

Mini speakers hidden among stuffed animals dotted the stone walls in the stairwell alcove. A playback mix of Charlemagne Palestine’s footsteps as he climbed up and down each flight, chanting, sipping cognac, filled the hollow shaft.

There was an empty bench, so I quickly leafed through promotional handouts. A broadened view of “cultural producers.” Forging. Investigating. Transpositions. Shifting. Distractions. Concerns. Exclusions. Curriculum. Large scale abstractions.

“In the United States, big-brush expressionism has historically been associated with a kind of heroic masculinity.”

Oh, that stuffy debate.

“Many artists–not least of them woman and queers–are currently recomplicating the terrain of gestural, messy, physical, chromatic, embodied, handmade practices.”

Recomplicating?

Already starting to sound like it could be a letdown.

Turning the corner on the 4th floor, I was surprised to see a grouping of vertical ceramic abstract sculptures, non-functional, not craft. Slick with precisely defined angles, John Mason’s work since the early 50’s has pushed the possibilities of clay as an art form. You can see in Tile Wall (2010), with its depth and flow, that technical limitations have only continued to challenge him to push them farther.

I wanted to imagine Dona Nelson’s reversible textural improvisations on canvas in Okie Dokie (2008) and String Beings (2013) as a performance of accumulated actions. The layered paint soaked fabric or string, stitched into a simple grid, kept bouncing back and forth between uneventful and admirable.

Locked into a stream of typicality, no matter where my eyes landed on Jacqueline Humphries’ towering 31/13/2014 with its reflective silver paint, pink and baby blue, I had to remind myself of her other work with its strong, loose, brisk strokes.

Across the room was Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s oversized “NO,” pieced together from wrinkled, cut up drop cloth accented with spray painted zebra spots. The process of “unlearning” formal structuring for a more “risky” and “messy” surface seems to have been tackled in this example.

To the right, Louise Fishman’s choppy strokes have always seemed unfulfilled and confused to me. Involved in the feminist movement, her commitment was “to figure out what part of me came from all the male stuff in my history and to eliminate it.” I could feel her still wrestling with this as she painted Venice’s canals and waterways in both Crossing the Rubicon (2012) and Ristretto (2013).

Seeing Sheila Hick’s textile pieces reminded me not to miss her Chelsea exhibition.

I went ahead and took the advice of the placard to “slow down” as I watched the shadows from the flow of visitors as they melted into the inside cityscape captured by Zoe Leonard’s camera obscura installation. 955 Madison Avenue (2014) is her 5th location for this ongoing project.

Heading down the stairs, I started thinking about a line I’d read that morning in Etel Adnan’s Master of the Eclipse. “Are these countries considering “culture” a remedy?

All I knew was that her work was on the 3rd floor.

A field of yellow-orangeness calm immediately drew me towards a corner room.

Each small painting of fluent shapes and gentle tones took me somewhere. Far from where I was.

A poet, essayist, playwright and visual artist from Beirut, Etel Adnan lives between Paris and Sausalito, where she has been writing and painting about concerns such as identity, the Lebanese Civil War, nature and indifference.

At 89, with major exhibitions currently in China and Qatar, and even though she’s been boxed into the currently fashionable category of “older women artists” who are a bit unknown or unrecognized, the viewer has the choice to either continue walking or venture with her beyond language and image.

Among the ink & watercolor drawings in between the accordion folds of Adnan’s leporello poem books in the display cases, I read her handwritten words out loud from Five Senses for One Death, 1969.

A door opens on an eye

eye which looks like a line

gone with the sun

behind them mountain

Shut in by the noise

Don’t tell me I am a dog

when you see me eat a poppy

I sniff gasoline in band-aids

pour

a forest of dripline hides the

narcotics squad

we have a sargeant who smells

and we both spat on the road

I continued with Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut, 1968.

explosions of light

bulbs exploding

cracking

The whole human race

bombarded by so many

news, images. The voltage

of intercourse,

and a requiem for the sound barrier!

behold the white horse behold the white dog behold

the white bear the constellations are white to the

movie screen is white the mosque is white and

Arabia and Africa is white and Asia is

white and Oceania is white only America is

not white….

As I was leaving the museum, I asked the guard on the lower level if he had actually seen people putting money into the clear plastic bins standing by the elevator with “ALL DONATIONS WILL GO TO NOTHING” or “ALL DONATIONS WILL GO TO SOMETHING” printed on them. He wasn’t sure.