Buscando al pingüino albino

La muestra también está llena de sorpresas y obras de arte ocultas. Los 19 retratos que Jonathan Horowitz presenta de los secuestradores del 11 de septiembre están repartidos por todo el museo; una pintura de 1991 similar a un Basquiat, supuestamente del maestro del jazz Miles Davis, parece una falsificación; y el tablero de conglomerado con spray Holy Shit , de Dan Colen, destaca sobre las escaleras.

Down by law es donde el tema de la Bienal adquiere todo su sentido. Se trata de una muestra dentro de la muestra, comisariada por The Wrong Gallery, un colectivo liderado por Maurizio Cattelan. Down ... es una visión de la rareza de Estados Unidos a través de la mirada curiosa de un forastero. La pequeña sala está abarrotada de arriba abajo de arte ( Piss Christ ), artistas (Mapplethorpe) y temas (raza, religión, esclavitud) polémicos.

De vuelta al vestíbulo, donde todo empieza o acaba, una impresionante proyección de vídeo parece resumir el espíritu de esta Bienal. La obra magníficamente absurda de Pierre Huyghe A Journey that Wasn't documenta una expedición para localizar a un raro ejemplar de pingüino albino. Rodada en la Antártica y Central Park, se trata de una película engañosa que fracasa de forma intencionada.

Ambiciosa y extravagante, con objetivos imposiblemente trascendentalistas, la Whitney Bienal de 2006 no se diferencia de la búsqueda del pingüino inexistente: puede ser verdad o no, parece real pero no lo es. Inestable y equívoca, agradable y a veces provocativa, no me atrevería a decir si esta Bienal refleja el actual estado de las cosas en el mundo del arte o solo una idea que tienen los comisarios metida en sus cabezas.

Traducción: Paloma Valenciano

whitney biennial 2006

Bruno LeMieux-Ruibal

The issues that make the Whitney Biennial a hotbed of controversy and contradiction seem to have reached a point of no return this year. Beyond the quality of the art shown, the Americanness (or lack thereof) and purpose of the event is being debated, fuelled by the presence of non-American curators (the British Chrissie Iles and the French Philippe Vergne) and artists. In a fast-evolving art world where fairs, museum shows and biennials periodically exhibit the latest in art, plus increasingly blurred frontiers and artists working and thinking globally, a show of "American art" made in the "last two years" seems indeed almost ludicrous, yet it is very unlikely that the Whitney will stop producing Biennials anytime soon. Almost half of the roughly 500,000 yearly visitors of the Whitney come for the Biennial alone. This year they will pay 15 dollars per person to walk around (and through) art they neither like nor understand.

Fortunately (or not), the curators are well aware and conscious of the difficulty of making a Biennial of American art now . This biennial will be remembered as "Post-American," and as the first to have a title. The curators intend with Day for Night not only to pay homage to François Truffaut's La Nuit Americaine , but to give an idea of the -in their minds- shadowy, confusing moment the world and the cultural sphere are experiencing now, plighted by war and discontentment, exploring subjects such as death, alienation and rebellion ("day for night" is not only the American name of Truffaut's film, but also a cinematographic technique in which night scenes are filmed during the day using a filter). Whether this elaborate curatorial premise is actually reflected in the exhibition is debatable. True enough, almost nothing here screams "America," and the messy openness of the show seems to reflect the organizer's intentions. Punchy, positively not beautiful and populated by a number of veteran artists (whose presence is not always justified), the 2006 Biennial works as a necessary counterpoint to those young-and-easy mega shows such as Greater New York catering to the money-driven superficial art corral. Dark and "different" as it may be, though, the Biennial participates of many of the art world's deficiencies: it is themed, but lacks spontaneity; it is politically conscious, but to the extent that it becomes grotesque; it includes lots of painting but does not squeeze the best out of the medium; it focuses on young-but-not-necessarily-good art and includes all the fashionable artists of the Chelsea galleries; it is also dangerously heavy in the scissors-and-glue kind of amateurish art that has boomed lately.

A big turnoff in Day for Night is the way the curators interfere with the viewer's experience via the longest and most pretentious museum labels ever invented. They tell you what to look at, what the work means and what you should think of it all in grandiose-sounding words. They also throw in demonstration-like statements on "social responsibility," "defying the Establishment," the "American underground" and "history," as if they feared their critical tone was not clear enough.

The paintings included in the show are often flat and unappealing but some offer expression: Kelley Walker's appropriations of press images -similar to Warhol's Race Riots-, Mark Grotjah's monochromatic white paintings and Troy Brantuch's black-and-white, Gerhard-Richter-ish surfaces. Rudolf Stingel's gigantic photorealist canvas shows the artist deep-in-thought, haunted by who-knows-what, as a mock of grand-style painting.

There are scores of video projections in cavernous individual dark rooms, but only the very flashy ones manage to catch people's attention. Francesco Vezzoli's already-famous Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula outrageously funny and smart, is a winner, but other than as a provocation, it is difficult to grasp what it is doing here, the work of an Italian artist who neither works nor lives in the United States. Veteran Billy Sullivan's slideshow achieves poignancy in a Nan Goldin fashion, while Paul Chan's room-size floor projection of shadows, simple and poetic, is a rarity among high-tech art. Mysterious artist Anthony Burdin's total installation depicts the activities of this nomad who supposedly lives in a car somewhere in California. His installation is ambitious and casual, ridiculous and affecting at the same time.

Of the artists using photography, Robert Gober's 1978-2000 is the most impressive: a series of 22 black-and-white photos of lyrical and moving effect. Documenting nondescript car journeys around New York, the images also speak of the ingrained hatred and intolerance in this country. Another strong photographic presence is that of Florian Maier-Aichen and Amy Blakemore's. Between photo and conceptual is the work of brilliant mind Adam McEwen and his false obituaries of Jeff Koons, Bill Clinton and others.

Collectives are the latest art fad, and this Biennial has plenty of them. Fashionable fictional "Reena Spaulings" have created here an ingenious awning covering the name of museum patron Emily Fisher Landau (one of the biggest donors to the Biennial). Institutional critique is an interesting but already well-worn practice, and Reena is represented by the powerful Galerie Chantal Crousel anyway.

In a perhaps unintentional segregation, the curators treat black artists as a collective, separating their art in a room "for blacks only" and ruining their message. Robert A. Pruitt manages to escape this "separate but equal" division with a powerful work that draws from hip-hop culture and stereotypes.