The Whitney Biennial talks a lot and says little

Within the disorders of rhetoric, there are expressions and questions such as "nobody is paying attention to this", "did you know that...?"

or “although no one is saying anything about…” which usually precede obviousness, obvious secrets and

strategies .

The latest Whitney Biennial (an exhibition held every two years at the Whitney Museum in New York to showcase work by emerging artists in the United States) chooses one of these,

, with the purpose of giving up surprise beforehand and to talk about his own fiction: that of discovering without discovering anything, that of shouting from the rooftops what appear to be truths for a select few.

Paradoxically, beyond the choice of such an ironically polysemic title, this Biennial takes itself very seriously, from the design of the spaces —a plant painted black with a multitude of partitions, as a "labyrinth" and another white and luminous lower floor, with an antiseptic design in the style of luxury hotel lobbies—to the choice of works that require excessive context in a space that does not provide it and causes them to tend to be assimilated in a disorderly manner.

Exhibition view of the Whitney Biennial.

Liao Pan (China News Service via Getty Ima)

The more than sixty artists chosen by curators Adrianne Edwards and David Breslin are represented with works that are only awkwardly displayed in the designed space.

The virtual absence of figurative painting or sculpture and the primacy of installation and video fit strangely into a typical art gallery environment, although the spectacular light on the upper floor and the dividing walls make it possible to create more unique spaces for some works of a more intimate or immersive nature.

Such is the case of the video installation by Alfredo Jaar, made up of a silent recording of the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington DC and some powerful fans that emulate the noise of the police helicopter that appears in the video for the terror of the protesters.

, 2021) or Coco Fusco's video on Hart Island, a traditional site of mass graves in periods of plague and reopened during the pandemic for unknown corpses (

, 2021).

Although the grouping of images, the use of drones and Fusco's aesthetic decisions manage to avoid easy sentimentality and abstract the visitor from a walk through relatively assimilable videos, the resemblance of this work to that of Laura Poitras (

, 2020) exhibited at the Neuen Berliner Kunstverei last summer ages the pandemic narrative.

In general terms, the use of video is presented as a novelty in itself, without paying much attention to its layout or its structure, beyond the recreation of the black box of cinema.

It is strange that video appears as a new element, since museums have been integrating it into the exhibition discourse for many years, and it is precisely North American artists who have naturalized it in their museum practices with greater ease and ingenuity since the 70s (see the early works of Martha Rosler or Bruce Nauman).

Digital art, very scarce in the exhibition, remains somewhat anchored in a representation of the zombie and the political in a game that is more technical than expressively significant (

Andrew Roberts, 2020).

Exhibition view of the Whitney Biennial.

Spencer Platt (Getty Images)

The most successful examples of the Biennial are the most unintentionally peripheral and arise where the spectacular and speed stop and give way to a non-absorbed discourse, more parodic than solemn and more visionary than virtuous.

Edison's last breath, preserved in a tube since 1931, along with a sound recording by Raven Chacon may not achieve an excessively symbolic effect, but it does create a pseudo-mystical atmosphere typical of a seance, which is supported by the excessive artificiality of black walls.

The disturbing atmosphere provokes an almost humorous reflection on the paths of American geniuses and the gigantic identity crisis that the country has been going through for years and that has only been aggravated by post-coronavirus pessimism.

(2021-2022) is perhaps the best of the entire exhibition and the piece that best takes advantage of the large space without columns and large windows.

One of them shows an attractive young man with a smiling face lying on the floor with a book in his hand;

in another, the same man points a rifle, but his gesture is relaxed and pleasant;

finally, in the third, he poses shirtless in a homey-looking office.

The young man's gesture and the large format of the photographs attract attention, but as you begin to observe in more detail, crossing the room, certain disturbing objects begin to be perceived.

The book he holds is

, from the Prussian soldier Clausewitz, and his arms are covered in scratches.

The office in the last photo is full of military symbols carefully arranged so as not to be conspicuous at first glance.

In reality, the character in the photos is an actor who bears a strong resemblance to Erik Prince, the founder of the all-powerful Blackwater arms company, involved in numerous military operations of dubious legitimacy.

Through advertising language, Ellison demonstrates the mechanisms of empathy and erotic attraction as a highly dangerous means of generating predetermined unconscious responses.

His visual tricks, with a great ironic result, represent in an unbeatable and humble way that “open secret” that the Biennial is entitled.

Ellison breaks visitors' expectations and induces,

A work by artist Denyse Thomasos in a room at the Whitney Museum Biennale in New York. Spencer Platt (Getty Images)

The choice of artists has sought to be a diverse account of the discourses on the United States, from its most canonical assimilation to the most peripheral artistic uses, but it has lacked a first review of those structures that frame these discourses.

Poet Louise Glück, last year's Nobel Prize winner, explained in 2001 that America's obsession with originality was coupled with a desire to "produce an aesthetic commodity, a set of gestures that might be immediately received as novelty, but whose replication is also immediately possible” (in

).

The desire of the curators has been able to find this paradox: their desire to open the walls of art to include more has faced resistance to modifying the criteria for representing that same diversity.

Including "other things" has not served for anything, because perhaps what is necessary is to change the conditions so that these "others" have the power to modify the site in which they appear.

Whitney Biennial 2022. Whitney

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