The Whitney BiennialThrough May 26, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., New Y

Like most of Judith Schaechter’s work, Bigtop Flophouse Bedspins is whimsically sinister, gaudily colorful and packed with extraneous detail. The stained-glass light box depicts a mess of bug-eyed animals (bunnies, chicks, frogs) and carnival detritus (cupcakes, balloons, dice) splattered over a billowing red checkerboard. There’s an overwhelming sense of overwhelming senselessness: Imagine Dumbo’s Pink Elephant nightmare, but starring Ren and Stimpy and directed by David Lynch. In the foreground, a wasted clown slumps resignedly, a long-suffering look on his unshaven face. A question mark hangs over his left shoulder, pointedly. Above his head there’s a cartoon speech-balloon with a single word: “Alas!”

Distended, distracted and eager to please, this Biennial bears much in common with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (which happens to be running concurrently). Both events favor entertainment value over cultural or intellectual worth. Both place a premium on novelty, variety and youth appeal. And both revel in the illusion of weirdness and daring, without putting safety at risk.

Of course, the Whitney Museum of American Art harbors far loftier aspirations than Ringling Bros. Its staffers and supporters often tout their signature event as a potential launching pad for emerging or undervalued artists, a summation of recent aesthetic values and trends, and a vehicle for political agendas or cultural ideals. And past Biennials have indeed filled these prescriptions, to greater or lesser degrees. This year, however, we’re a nation at war, imbued with “a profound sense of being at the most portentous crossroad in history.” That’s chief curator Laurence Rinder, writing in the catalog essay about the art world’s response to Sept. 11. He goes on to praise “sincerity” and “truth,” disparage irony and commerce, and claim “little need for works of art that lack a powerful sense of conviction.”

The prevalent conviction of this show is that of a decidedly juvenile strain. It’s an aesthetic of empty virtuosity (Gerry Snyder’s Poussin-meets-Pooh oil paintings); thoughtless appropriation (Ouattara Watts’ assemblages, equal parts Rauschenberg and Schnabel); painstaking pointlessness (Roxy Paine’s stainless-steel tree in Central Park); gee-whiz technophilia (way too many tedious Internet/software/database projects); half-wit one-liners (Christian Marclay’s installation Band, consisting of musical instruments modified so as to be unplayable); and half-baked ideas (Rachel Harrison’s photo still of a luminous Michael Jackson kissing the Pope). A number of artists demonstrate the adolescent tendency to valorize cliques (mosh-pit rioters, professional snowboarders, high school cheerleaders). Others belong to cliques themselves, like Detroit’s Destroy All Monsters Collective and Providence’s Forcefield, both of which turn in the most teenaged, insipid work of this (or, one suspects, any other) Biennial. Even some of the good stuff -- Chris Ware’s comics, Tracie Morris’ spoken word -- are cheapened in this context. Their inclusion seems like part of a marketing campaign.

Still, a handful of unequivocally strong pieces have slipped past Rinder’s radar. Lorna Simpson’s Easy to Remember, a DVD projection of 15 different mouths humming the Rodgers and Hart tune, strikes the show’s most human note; its simple grace and unforced intimacy are remarkably affecting. Vija Celmins achieves a similar depth, but through less obvious means -- her spider web paintings, simultaneously photo-realistic and otherworldly, emote through a kind of absence. Four vivid stained-glass pieces by Schaecter, the Biennial’s sole Philly representative, manage to be both inviting and off-putting. Jim Campbell’s LED-Plexiglas panel projections (depicting pedestrians in Midtown Manhattan shortly after 9/11) employ technology with an understated ingenuity. And Omer Fast delivers one of the cleverest and least cumbersome installations: His Glendive Foley is a two-channel video installation showing rural housefronts and accompanying sound effects. (The fact that Glendive, Mont., is “the nation’s smallest self-contained television market” seems meaningful but almost incidental; Fast invests the work with enough intelligent humor to override its conceptual idea.) And then there are the sound and video pieces, which would be impossible to digest fully even on repeated visits. A small sampling -- including audio collages by Maryanne Amancher and DJ Olive -- suggests that the work in these media may also rank among the highlights of the show.

But alas! Those highlights are exceptions. More characteristic of this Biennial’s misguided priorities is Ken Feingold’s If/Then, which consists of two silicone mannequin heads conversing via artificial intelligence. During this reviewer’s visit, If/Then was perpetually surrounded by giggling children, attracted not by the rigor or “concept” of the work but by its sheer oddness. Feingold may or may not have intended it, but what he has produced is something akin to a big-top freak show for the PC age. Which makes sense, given the Whitney’s carnival barking (“Biggest Biennial since 1981!”) and its avowed emphasis on work “which seems to lie beyond the pale of the contemporary art world” (an objective that begins to sound like exoticism). Too bad Rinder’s circus is, by and large, an orgy of the ordinary. Send in the clowns.

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December 29, 2005
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