"The Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for
Night," is the 73rd in a series of annuals and biennials. It is also
the first to have a formal title. "Day for Night" is taken from
Francois Truffaut’s 1973 film "La Nuit americaine," which refers to the
technique of putting filters over the camera lens to make daylight
appear to be night. FROM THE NEW YORK SUN:
"Truffaut’s film – about the making of a film – is a
brilliant, metaphoric exploration of the realm where life and fiction
meet, interweave, and influence each other. A tragic farce involving
love, death, jealousy, sex, betrayal, alcoholism, stardom, scandal, and
stardom, "La Nuit americaine" is a film in which the director, played
by Truffaut, claims that "Life is always ruled by conflicting forces"
and "No one’s private life runs smoothly. There is more harmony in
films than in life – no traffic jams, no dead periods."Certainly there are conflicting forces and dead periods in this year’s
Biennial. But there are also a handful of interesting pieces here,
especially in the areas of film and video. The engaging work, however,
is pulled under by the show’s overwhelming political agenda. In the
end, I came away feeling as though I’d seen it all countless times
before.For all of this Biennial’s carnivalistic variety, its drawings,
paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, performances, and
installations, the exhibition is little more than a one-act circus. Its
artistic stances are currently accepted and lauded in the reigning
Duchampian academy – an academy that was built originally on an
anti-art stance of subversion, counterculture, and guerrilla tactics.
It has reigned for so long that it now has nothing and nobody to rebel
against.But Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne, the two foreign-born curators of
this American exhibition, would probably suggest that all of this
reflects the museum’s ability to present us with an accurate glimpse
into the current zeitgeist. We Americans live, the show reminds us, in
an uncertain, topsy-turvy world in which anxieties are heightened by
war, natural disasters, political upheavals, and terrorist threats.
"The artists exhibited in the 2006 Biennial," the catalog’s
introduction tells us, "are working in a liminal space – somewhere
between day and night … [a] ‘twilight zone’ [where] everything is
called into question … [where] meaning becomes ambiguous … [and
where] the political, the erotic, the dark, the hidden, and the violent
collide."Yet, when "meaning becomes ambiguous" in many of this Biennial’s
artworks, it is because much of the art is confused. Rather than
explore conflict, ambiguity, and confusion as artistic subjects (as
Truffaut does in "La Nuit americaine") many of the artists seem to have
merely stopped when their works became ambiguous and confused.
There’s another show in town that highlights the love affair between photographers and cities:
FROM THE NEW YORK SUN: Cities attract photographers like courtesans attract lovers.Paris and New York have probably inspired the largest number of suitors – each smitten shutterbug expressing his passion with the click of his camera – but other cities have their swains. Currently, the Candace Dwan and Nailya Alexander Galleries have combined forces in an inaugural joint exhibition, "Northern Light," that features work by two photographers devoted to two cities situated at about 60 degrees north latitude. (New York is 40 degrees 29 minutes north latitude.) Alexey Titarenko’s "St. Petersburg Series" and Pentti Sammallahti’s "Helsinki" are both ardent in their grappling with the objects of their attention, but – to conclude this analogy before it becomes obscene – as different as two disparate beaux wooing two disparate maids.
