Rough Draft:
Can we call it the Tired biennial? And I mean that in a good way, in a "Yes I do feel deeply tired as an American in this American night?" It was a great show, and I say that even though I gritted my teeth through the whole thing. Even though I want to kick Dan Colen into Dash Snow and watch them tumble down a flight of stairs like the hipster Terrence and Philip they are. It is fitting that they were a part of this biennial, which is not about good or bad, and that is what makes it smart. There are disturbing trends in this biennial, which makes sense because we live in a disturbing world. And thankfully there are little pockets of redemption scattered amid the piles of rubbish and extra heaping quantities of nostalgia and the word shit everywhere.
I like to start at the top and work my way down. So yes, it does disturb me that the Wrong Gallery has curated an installation on the Mezzanine floor. But not for the reasons you'd think. Yes, yes, I will eventually make my case that art should be more than arranging a bunch of stuff (apologies to Haim Steinbach). But I am not pissed because curators have been made into artists. I am pissed that artists have become curators. I am pissed because the Wrong Gallery installation makes perfect visual sense, and sets the tone for a truly bleak show. Almost every single thing they curated into their outlaw show was an artifact or artifact-like: pictures of prison farm inmates with real fingerprints. Real serial killers. Real pictures of poor people. Flat illustration re-enactments of real assasinations. Really visually boring video of a woman who has really waited on GW Bush. And of course Chris Burden's shooting of a Boeing 737 photograph reigns over the whole affair, the granddaddy of artifact and reality art.
Wait a minute. Chris Burden is one poetic motherfucker! And he used the sheer ballsy beauty and impossibility of what he was doing to transform reality. His photograph is spooky and nostalgia-inducing in this post- 9/11 world... who would consider restaging that one? But more important, it stands out in this curated affair as an actual artistic transformation, a poetic gesture captured so that what it evokes stands on its own two feet, becomes more than what it actually is. The rest is strictly Wunderkammer--look at this freaky stuff I've found. The same sentiment abounds in artists who are addicted to arcane research and using specific cool things as material, and it's no different from that childish Microsoft impulse to call everything "My:" My Documents, My Computer, My Favorite Network Places. My Buttplug. My Interest in Something Obscure.
This slavish attachment to reality and indulgence in nostalgia pervades the rest of the show downstairs. I've got to hand it to the Wrong Gallery folks. They definitely have their fingers on the pulse. I felt completely prepared for what lay ahead. I love that each floor begins with some pre-nostalgia to get you in the mood, and I love that it comes in the form of obituaries (which, incidentally are not unfunny if you have the patience to read so much text in a very reading-glasses show). I love Rudolph Stengler's big unhappy and tired man, who is really the mascot for this show. I love the way he contemplates the swinging silver sticks as if to say "this too shall pass," and I love that the silver sticks are the hourglass of this biennial and will hopefully stop swinging soon because they will be caught in hardened stalagtites of wax. There is a finite space between the candle and the floor, and they put new candles in three or four times a day. Waxy buildup.
And more nostalgia--speaking of Urs Fischer, I love Gordon Matta Clark! This is starting to feel like a greatest hits album. Are Gober and Steven Parrino here to do anything other than make the younguns look like they need to get out and live more? Maybe do some funky experiments with their cameras? Pairing Parrino and Koether was cruel, but not half as cruel (or clever)as Majoli and Serra. The night of the opening I was convinced that Majoli looked lightweight next to the more strident and defiant Serra. But on second viewing, it was obvious that I was wrong. Stop Bush, indeed. Majoli's watercolors are tender and ambiguous and tend to transcend their research material. Serra managed to turn someone else's torture into a t-shirt design. It was a statement of powerlessness in this context. This show skewered a few blue-chip modernists who felt compelled (were enticed?) to sincerely engage the protest rhetoric of yesteryear to bad effect. I am not sure that this was an effective curatorial strategy. It felt more snarky than illuminating.
My Icons full in effect by Kenneth Anger... and suddenly I am really starting to see all the ways that this show is a big fat reality sandwich. It isn't just that curatorial drive to present My Cool Things. More subtle, but equally flat insistence on reality is everywhere. It's in Gedi Sibony's janky low-pile formalism, which evokes, of all things, a past show at the Whitney. This manages to create instant insider nostalgia using the least generous tools at hand. The echo chamber at its finest! In Dan Colen's ridiculously easy fake rocks. The material reality of these rocks is just like the art world. They come with their own commentary, are extremely lightweight but attempt to masquerade both as cultural foundations and as bad-boy nihilism. They can also fit neatly into the bed of a small pickup truck. No muss, no fuss. Eat shit and die, please!
We all seem to agree that things are looking pretty bleak. Pawing through our detritus and rearranging it to highlight our individuality only highlights that bleakness, and adds lonliness. And looking into the past, whether it's the Smithson exhibit or the (now commodified) rhetoric of protest, just magnifies all that bleak lonliness. Maybe this should be the Head In The Oven biennial...
... but I am an optimist. In fact, every single time I thought about canning it because this show was giving life to some deeply negative thoughts, some brilliant sweetheart of an artist actually delivered what I need to keep living in this truly fucked up time. Paul Chan's 1st Light seduced me and actually made all my fears come true for a minute and allowed me to laugh at myself. Yes, I do feel like everything's drifting apart! Thank you, you generous creature! The Caligula trailer was hysterical and appropriate. Cameron Jamie's Kranky Klaus worked some serious magic, especially before I did my Krampus research. As I was watching, all I could think was "This institution is a menace! Why are people okay with this?" Mean-maskfaced jingle-butted monsters in fur seriously messing up well-meaning folks who are just out having a drink or going to the pharmacy. And the funny part is that these people, who are getting their faces rubbed in snow and their shirts pulled off by really loud scary beasts, seem slightly amused, slightly worried, and very patient. Sure, every now and again a little girl cries or a little boy gives a true What Is This? look. These little glimpses of what I would do in such a situation only make everybody else's playing along more surreal. I left Kranky Klaus with a better understanding of what I find so eerie about much of life in America today. It's the complacency. And I think that Jamie is one smart cookie for manipulating a particularly freakish Austrian tradition (apparently these people deal with jingle-butted monsters every year) in such a deft way.
Takeaway:
Everything that was healing and generous broke away from the larger slavish attention to reality, the curatorial/research impulse, and nostalgia. The future is in dreaming and twisting. And that seems right, doesn't it? After all, we have to imagine our way out of the current mess.
Can we call it the Tired biennial? And I mean that in a good way, in a "Yes I do feel deeply tired as an American in this American night?" It was a great show, and I say that even though I gritted my teeth through the whole thing. Even though I want to kick Dan Colen into Dash Snow and watch them tumble down a flight of stairs like the hipster Terrence and Philip they are. It is fitting that they were a part of this biennial, which is not about good or bad, and that is what makes it smart. There are disturbing trends in this biennial, which makes sense because we live in a disturbing world. And thankfully there are little pockets of redemption scattered amid the piles of rubbish and extra heaping quantities of nostalgia and the word shit everywhere.
I like to start at the top and work my way down. So yes, it does disturb me that the Wrong Gallery has curated an installation on the Mezzanine floor. But not for the reasons you'd think. Yes, yes, I will eventually make my case that art should be more than arranging a bunch of stuff (apologies to Haim Steinbach). But I am not pissed because curators have been made into artists. I am pissed that artists have become curators. I am pissed because the Wrong Gallery installation makes perfect visual sense, and sets the tone for a truly bleak show. Almost every single thing they curated into their outlaw show was an artifact or artifact-like: pictures of prison farm inmates with real fingerprints. Real serial killers. Real pictures of poor people. Flat illustration re-enactments of real assasinations. Really visually boring video of a woman who has really waited on GW Bush. And of course Chris Burden's shooting of a Boeing 737 photograph reigns over the whole affair, the granddaddy of artifact and reality art.
Wait a minute. Chris Burden is one poetic motherfucker! And he used the sheer ballsy beauty and impossibility of what he was doing to transform reality. His photograph is spooky and nostalgia-inducing in this post- 9/11 world... who would consider restaging that one? But more important, it stands out in this curated affair as an actual artistic transformation, a poetic gesture captured so that what it evokes stands on its own two feet, becomes more than what it actually is. The rest is strictly Wunderkammer--look at this freaky stuff I've found. The same sentiment abounds in artists who are addicted to arcane research and using specific cool things as material, and it's no different from that childish Microsoft impulse to call everything "My:" My Documents, My Computer, My Favorite Network Places. My Buttplug. My Interest in Something Obscure.
This slavish attachment to reality and indulgence in nostalgia pervades the rest of the show downstairs. I've got to hand it to the Wrong Gallery folks. They definitely have their fingers on the pulse. I felt completely prepared for what lay ahead. I love that each floor begins with some pre-nostalgia to get you in the mood, and I love that it comes in the form of obituaries (which, incidentally are not unfunny if you have the patience to read so much text in a very reading-glasses show). I love Rudolph Stengler's big unhappy and tired man, who is really the mascot for this show. I love the way he contemplates the swinging silver sticks as if to say "this too shall pass," and I love that the silver sticks are the hourglass of this biennial and will hopefully stop swinging soon because they will be caught in hardened stalagtites of wax. There is a finite space between the candle and the floor, and they put new candles in three or four times a day. Waxy buildup.
And more nostalgia--speaking of Urs Fischer, I love Gordon Matta Clark! This is starting to feel like a greatest hits album. Are Gober and Steven Parrino here to do anything other than make the younguns look like they need to get out and live more? Maybe do some funky experiments with their cameras? Pairing Parrino and Koether was cruel, but not half as cruel (or clever)as Majoli and Serra. The night of the opening I was convinced that Majoli looked lightweight next to the more strident and defiant Serra. But on second viewing, it was obvious that I was wrong. Stop Bush, indeed. Majoli's watercolors are tender and ambiguous and tend to transcend their research material. Serra managed to turn someone else's torture into a t-shirt design. It was a statement of powerlessness in this context. This show skewered a few blue-chip modernists who felt compelled (were enticed?) to sincerely engage the protest rhetoric of yesteryear to bad effect. I am not sure that this was an effective curatorial strategy. It felt more snarky than illuminating.
My Icons full in effect by Kenneth Anger... and suddenly I am really starting to see all the ways that this show is a big fat reality sandwich. It isn't just that curatorial drive to present My Cool Things. More subtle, but equally flat insistence on reality is everywhere. It's in Gedi Sibony's janky low-pile formalism, which evokes, of all things, a past show at the Whitney. This manages to create instant insider nostalgia using the least generous tools at hand. The echo chamber at its finest! In Dan Colen's ridiculously easy fake rocks. The material reality of these rocks is just like the art world. They come with their own commentary, are extremely lightweight but attempt to masquerade both as cultural foundations and as bad-boy nihilism. They can also fit neatly into the bed of a small pickup truck. No muss, no fuss. Eat shit and die, please!
We all seem to agree that things are looking pretty bleak. Pawing through our detritus and rearranging it to highlight our individuality only highlights that bleakness, and adds lonliness. And looking into the past, whether it's the Smithson exhibit or the (now commodified) rhetoric of protest, just magnifies all that bleak lonliness. Maybe this should be the Head In The Oven biennial...
... but I am an optimist. In fact, every single time I thought about canning it because this show was giving life to some deeply negative thoughts, some brilliant sweetheart of an artist actually delivered what I need to keep living in this truly fucked up time. Paul Chan's 1st Light seduced me and actually made all my fears come true for a minute and allowed me to laugh at myself. Yes, I do feel like everything's drifting apart! Thank you, you generous creature! The Caligula trailer was hysterical and appropriate. Cameron Jamie's Kranky Klaus worked some serious magic, especially before I did my Krampus research. As I was watching, all I could think was "This institution is a menace! Why are people okay with this?" Mean-maskfaced jingle-butted monsters in fur seriously messing up well-meaning folks who are just out having a drink or going to the pharmacy. And the funny part is that these people, who are getting their faces rubbed in snow and their shirts pulled off by really loud scary beasts, seem slightly amused, slightly worried, and very patient. Sure, every now and again a little girl cries or a little boy gives a true What Is This? look. These little glimpses of what I would do in such a situation only make everybody else's playing along more surreal. I left Kranky Klaus with a better understanding of what I find so eerie about much of life in America today. It's the complacency. And I think that Jamie is one smart cookie for manipulating a particularly freakish Austrian tradition (apparently these people deal with jingle-butted monsters every year) in such a deft way.
Takeaway:
Everything that was healing and generous broke away from the larger slavish attention to reality, the curatorial/research impulse, and nostalgia. The future is in dreaming and twisting. And that seems right, doesn't it? After all, we have to imagine our way out of the current mess.
posted by fisher6000 at 8:26 PM
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