Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night

Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night
I saw the exhibits yesterday, all quite fantastic, strong, crazy, angry and loud.
The biennial is curated by Chrissie Illes and Philippe Vergne. Day for night, is taken from a French film la nuit americanine. The movie uses photographic filters to make daylight appear to be darkness. Francois truffaut’s film depicts the making of a film, creating a confusion in the viewers mind, are we watching a film or the making of it.
The artists in the biennial are working in the twilight zone, challenging everything. Meaning becomes ambiguous as images slip between light and shadow. The political, the erotic, the dark and the hidden collide.
The disruption of normal patterns of seeing and experiencing is what moves contemporary art. Ambiguity is the acknowledgment that there is no single truth.
The entrance was illuminated by the peace tower that emerged from the sculpture court. Mark di Suverno and Rirkrit Tiravanija have put together, over 200 artists work, in a recreation of the peace tower, that was first constructed in 1966 in Los Angeles. It was known as the artists tower against the war in Vietnam. This tower is called the Biennial Peace tower. Each panel is 2'x2' attached on to the structure. For a closer look at the structure click here
http://whitney.org/biennial2006/projects/tower/
At the Whitney, lower levels were filled with a lot of buzz, loud music and big images, upstairs got quieter. We walked into a movie trailer, which was bizarre. It showed images of homosextual and heterosexual sex, men with gold penises, women applying cum to their faces.

Monica Majoli’s water colors depicting scenes of sexual fetishism were strong. One of the images was of a naked man hanging by his balls. It reminded me of the brutality of Abu Gharib prisons.

Dawolu Jabari Anderson’s bright yellow colored drawing of an African American man doing karate or kung fu was powerful. He was co-opting the vernacular of graphic design and advertisements in the U.S. that attempt to simplify and comodify black history.
In the same room was a black bust wrapped or strapped with books by African American writers. The books gave a sense of the power of the written word for an alternative truth to power relationships.

On each floor their was a obituary to a living icon, starting with Bill Clinton, followed by Nicole Kidman and Rod Stewart. Artist Adam McEwen’s fake obits were disturbingly bizarre to read.
Hannah Greeley’s silencer sculpture of a child attempting to be hooded and Richard Serra’s Stop Bush rendering of a hooded person was another intensely anguished reminder of the Iraq war.
.
The exhibits were challenging, exciting and angry. Only when Americans are really angry with what their government is doing to them and around the world, will the personal became political and action will follow. The Whitney curators have caught the pulse of the moment of an enraged and anguished nation, that is expressing its emotions through its artists.