2002, "The Whitney Biennial: Only Humans Can Understand..." Eye Level

"Only humans can understand the creation of the new," explains Pastor Peter Spencer of the Harvest Fellowship Church in San Antonio.  The Pastor, recorded on video, was hired by German artist Christian Jankowski to speak on behalf of video art for The Holy Artwork (2001), included at the 2002 Whitney Biennial.  Jankowski, who has previously employed special art assistants, such as children and magicians, collaborated with the American televangelist to ensure the sanctification of art.  The work begins with a few clips from the archives of the Harvest Church's Christmas pageants and then cuts to a chapel where Jankowski runs to the stage and collapses.  Then the pastor takes over and recites a sermon intended to inform the general public about the true "Great Artist." Finally, the pastor thanks God for video and then the segment loops. 

If only humans can understand the creation of the new, then it is the humans that will debate the new and find it innovative, problematic, or nothing new at all.  The Whitney Biennial typically enjoys a highly anticipated unveiling, exposing new art tendencies and prompting commentary. The 2002 Biennial and its alleged hip showcase of new art has generated what is becoming a tradition of sighing and general criticism from the art elite. The exhibition is the museum's most visited and is largely intended to serve the general public with an informative survey of the art of the moment.  The Biennial is to be somehow simultaneously progressive and accessible.  The challenge may be in curating an exhibition that draws from the best of contemporary art yet does not fall victim to the disorientating spectacle of mass media that the general public typically supports.  This is an exhibition trying to serve two masters.

The Whitney Biennial informally began, without much concern for public opinion, when Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney opened the Studio Club in Greenwich Village as an alternative exhibition space for a small audience of friends and patrons.  By 1931, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened to the general public and began hosting the official Annuals, which over the years have become the familiar Biennials.  While the Whitney boasts thousands of artists on the complete Biennial roster, figures from Edward Hopper to Dennis Hopper, the reality is that after the dust settles, only a select few go on to prominence or to have their work selected for the Whitney permanent collection.  Due the unpredictable nature of the future, there is no guarantee that work in the Biennial will be work of long-term success.  The Biennial is a platform for allowing new art to be seen, and the determination of what qualifies as new and what is art rests largely on the curator.

The primary curator of this year's 71st Biennial, Lawrence Rinder, selected over 100 participants, the greatest number since 1981.  In many ways the 2002 Biennial functions like an exhaustive carnival; there is much to see and the show attempts to have every customer walk away with at least one favorite ride.  The extensive exhibition requests time from the viewer and frequently a bit of knowledge about contemporary art.  Many of the performance art works require attendance at specific times during the three-month exhibition.  There is also the new interesting sideshow of 5 works installed amid Central Park.

A serious criticism of this year's Biennial, is the curatorial organization of the 51 works inside the Whitney Museum's main gallery spaces.  Rinder categorized the works based on the themes "Tribes," "Spaces," and "Beings," presented on three stories of the building.  In many respects, Rinder should be championed for attempting a conceptual order to the exhibition.  The Whitney Museum, with its multi-story office building set up, is not very conducive to presenting a cohesive show.  Rinder's pseudo-philosophical categories, however, are unfortunately vague and do not clearly translate to the viewer's experience. "Tribes," concerns subcultures (but not with every work). "Beings" is about death and memory (but only in some cases).  And is the category "Spaces" sincerely all inclusive of sculptural and installation space, pictorial space, architectural space, public space, and even outer space, or was it the category established for the spaces left over after all the other works were installed?  To get Rinder's theories, one must pursue his catalog essay, which most of the general public does not read.  Instead, the public is left to wander around, not sure if there is a direction or purpose for the arrangement of works.  The only solace is for the few who take the stairwell and get the continuum of the stand-alone, uncategorized, multi-level work by Chris Johanson. 

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of Rinder's categories is that he split up several works that bear interesting similarities. Rinder includes Ari Marcopoulos's photographs of young boy snowboarders in the "Tribes," or subcultures category.  Collier Schorr's An Accounting of Jens F. (Notes from the Helga/Jens project), (1999-2000), consists of a series of photos of a young German male model resembling Andrew Wyeth's Helga, and is located on Floor 2 in "Beings." Both Marcopoulus and Schorr, separated by Rinder, take a camera to the young, the beautiful, and the fearless.  These artists share an obsession of youth.  Several other artists also share some cross-categorical similarities in their presentation.  Up in "Tribes," Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin present their home movies side-by-side to reveal the similarities between the "Tribes" of lower class African American and Jewish families.  Grouped down in "Beings," Lorna Simpson presents Easy to Remember, (2001), side-by-side video footage of the lips of different people humming the same song.  The similar side-by-side visual presentation used by these artists, whom Rinder separates, reveals something of the techniques of mass media and the increasing simultaneity of life with burgeoning globalization.  There is also a close relationship between Jankowski, in "Tribes," who relied on Pastor Peter Spence to make his work, and the artist team Archive in "Beings," who ridiculously relied on psychic mediums to channel artist Joseph Cornell. 

If there is one category that Rinder may have actually overlooked it is "Cardboard," apparently a common interest among young artists throughout the Biennial and a likely backlash against slick, high tech production.  Hirsch Perlman's documentations of his performances with office supplies in Echo Park stand out as representation of the drab anti-aesthetic of a world with too much cardboard. Forcefield, an artist collective that consists of anonymous participants, seems like a Warholian joke played on the audience.  Their work, Third Annual Roggabogga, (2002), consists of statues made from cardboard paper and recycled materials presented in a darkened room and appearing like an aging fun house.  The work has been attacked with criticism, but perhaps Forcefield makes the strongest criticism of the art system by anonymously achieving a prominent position in the Biennial with childlike crafts. 

Arranged in a cardboard box filled with Styrofoam peanuts is Ken Feingold's If/Then, (2000).  For this work, two mannequin heads have been fitted with a computer program designed by the artist, that permits the heads to recite phrases in real-time cue of one another.  There is something futuristic about seeing two mannequin heads talk in a box, as if they are on route to a shopping mall in the future where clothes mannequins will talk.  The work implies that technology has not caught up with science fiction so an artist must perform the labor instead.  But these two talking heads are limited in that they can only respond and never understand one another.  We must assume that the heads are also limited in their ability to understand the creation of the new. 

Rachel Harrison installed three works consisting of cardboard, wood, found objects and images of taboo celebrities.  Harrison's sculptures have a low art, minimal aesthetic and are set up in a gallery space in a way that provokes a viewer to walk around them and discover the hidden images and objects.  Her Bustle in Your Hedgerow, (1999) is a wood panel with an almost hidden image of Elizabeth Taylor taken from The National Enquirer.  On the side of The Fourth Shade (2000), one finds a broken green shaded banker' s lamp, indicating again the over abundance of office supplies in today's world.  On the back of the wooden Unplugged is a print of Michael Jackson touching a rabbi's head.  Harrison's work in many ways is the poignant spot of the Biennial, exemplifying that if you seek you will find, even though it may require you to maneuver yourself through the museum.

Other work of interest includes the custom-made musical instrument installation by Christian Marclay.  It is a static spectacle of distorted drums and an accordion, sitting still and soundless, simply for contemplation under balmy rainbow colored entertainment lights.   The nearby work, by the group Destroy All Monsters Collective, exploits Detroit and some Hollywood content with a dark sadistic tint characteristic of its West Coast artists, Mike Kelly, Jim Shaw and Carey Loren.  Mark Napier' s Riot, (1999), a computer based work, exposes the chaos of the internet in a participatory text and logo overylay. Conor McGrady, whose drawings have been compared to those by Richard Pettibon, achieves a level of criticism concerning the struggle of life in Northern Ireland.  The work, though not formally innovative, reminds casual gallery goers of the decadence of civil liberty.  The same potency is evident in A.A. Bronson's work, Felix Partz, June 5, 1994, (1994 & 1999).  Bronson, a former member of the artist collaborative General Idea, presents a lacquer on vinyl portrait of his friend and former colleague who died of AIDS.  Chris Ware's popular comics are the Biennial novelty, positioned in Plexiglas museum boxes. The presence of the comic books implies that Rinder did actually consider the general public by giving them some everyday art that they might find more accessible, so accessible that the books can be bought at any nearby bookstore. 

For those with extra time and tolerance for art there is a sound room on the ground floor of the museum.  Maryanne Amacher's work, Excerpts:  Neurophonic Exercises (2002), is piercing and uncomfortable until one's ears grow numb and then the sound reaches its plateau and the ringing just begins.  Outside of the museum, at Central Park, there is much more breathing room.  Roxy Paine's futuristic steel tree Bluff, (2002), is located in the middle of the park.  In all of New York City, Paine actually succeeds at making something stand out as urban and artificial.  Also successful are Keith Edmier's historical statues, which are small-scale honors to his grandfathers, blending easily into a park where more famous but equally anonymous heroes are immortalized. 

The 2002 Whitney Biennial is a set of symptoms of the present, exposing the multiplicity of a postmodern society, the excess of cardboard boxes available to young artists, and the ongoing controversy of new art. For one to suggest that Rinder should have selected another group of artists would ignore that this year's participants are contemporary artists who would be contemporary artists even if they were not under Whitney's spotlight.  Under the spotlight however, they invite the shouting and shedding of tears, but it is there that they can be seen and potentially understood.