Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
NEW YORK - The Whitney Biennial never ceases to startle and confuse.
This time around, the exhibition has in its display a room in which a spiral staircase leads to nowhere and walls, ceiling and floor are covered with images and illuminated with psychedelic lighting.
Other galleries feature a series of drawings showing protests from 1968 and a canvas covered with synonyms for "nothing."
These pieces and other works by 105 artists and groups form the content of the 2004 Biennial, which opened Thursday at the Whitney Museum of American Art and runs through May 30. The show, held every two years and the museum's most well-known event, surveys art created since the previous exhibition.
"The Whitney Biennial is about embracing the art of our time, about the art of the present, produced by living artists of all generations," museum director Adam Weinberg said Wednesday at a media preview.
A common thread throughout the works, curators said, is a current of anxiety, of artists being driven by their environment and the events of the world around them, from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks to the war in Iraq.
"There was, from our point of view . . . just this underlying intensity. It's been a tumultuous two years," said Debra Singer, one of the show's three curators.
"Even works that might not reflect politics on the surface - there wasn't a studio visit I can recall where current events didn't come up."
The artists dealt with anxiety in a number of ways. Many looked back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, another chaotic era in American history. A series of drawings by Sam Durant shows images from protests of 1968, images that could have been as easily drawn from the antiwar protests of last year.
Other artists, such as Amy Cutler, focused on creating alternative worlds. Cutler's gouache on paper, Campsite, shows women doing seemingly ordinary tasks but in skewed ways.
Some artists examined issues of community, such as Catherine Opie with her series of photographs of surfers. And Emily Jacir combined photo and text in a powerful project that focused on Palestinians, who can't travel freely. Jacir asked the Palestinians what she could do for them as someone who could move around Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the responses were poignant, ranging from paying a telephone bill to leaving flowers at a grave.
Other works were simply baffling, such as Erick Swenson's Untitled, an installation of a horned animal posed on an area rug.
Aside from the displays inside the museum, some parts of the Biennial will be exhibited outside in public spaces. Nine of the works will be placed throughout Central Park; some are on view now, and others will be on view April 17.
There will also be a series of screenings, performances, artist seminars and discussions.
- Whitney Museum of American Art: www.whitney.org