Word: biennials
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...speaking, worthless, as are the hoards sitting in neighboring Zimbabwe and Botswana--an estimated $8 billion worth at last count. All three nations are, frankly, fed up with having to sit on all that wealth. So when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) assembles for its biennial meeting this week in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, delegates from around the world will be asked to consider taking the highly controversial step of lifting the seven-year...
Although the present Biennial avoids making a synthetic statement, the exhibition provides a great excuse to display an assortment of excellent new art. Given the diversity of contemporary visual practice and the widely accepted premise that all curating is somehow biased, it's no wonder that co-curators Lisa Phillips and Louise Neri staunchly resist labeling their exhibition a "survey." Even though the show feels more like a survey than any of the recent Biennials, in their catalog essay Phillips and Neri write that they tried to avoid making a "sampler" and instead looked for certain "millenial tendencies...
Demonstrating his extremely inventive use of video, Tony Oursler's sculptures simultaneously fascinate and disturb. For the Biennial, he presents his most restrained and sophisticated work yet, three-dimensional glass ovals resting on metal poles or the floor, on to which he projects video images of talking heads. They stare at the viewer and blankly recite children's variations of songs commonly heard in school yards: "Joy to the world, the teacher's dead; we barbecued her head." Yet monotone delivery and eerie visual presentation transform these rhymes into disturbing alien utterances. We watch both mesmerized and repulsed, while...
Compared to the '95 Biennial, which featured such American greats as Richard Serra, Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly, Phillips and Neri have placed more emphasis on newly emerging artists. This generational shift seems exceptionally welcome in light of the rather uncompelling contributions by the '97 Biennial's more well-known practitioners--including Bruce Nauman, Francesco Clemente and Dan Graham. A notable exception, Ilya Kabakov is one of the few older artists in the current exhibition whose seniority is reflected in the quality of his work. Perhaps overly ambitious for its context, his wistfull installation of a crumbling hospital...
...clustered around a giant mound of pink modeling putty. Like the exhibition's curators, Long and Stereolab understand the importance of putting on a good, crowd-pleasing show. Their work may not be as edgy or focused as some of the exhibition's other contributors, but like the '97 Biennial it's smart, stylish and remarkably engaging...