FOIL

 

The Ungovernables, 2012 New Museum Triennial at 235 Bowery
Feb 15 - April 22, 2012
  -->

If the crowded and stiff (and overrated?) biennial at the Whitney uptown somehow adheres to a tame and sophisticated art-world sensibility, The Ungovernables, New Museum’s 2012 triennial resists it: much of the work in the exhibition—by a total of 34 artists, groups, and collectives—are political in nature in one form or another. All floors of an entire museum dedicated mostly to political art can prove a risky endeavor; political art, by definition, suggests taking a specific stance on a topic in debate, with which every viewer may or may not agree. However, the range of subjects and forms that the curator, Eungie Joo, and her assistant, Ryan Inouye, have chosen provide an excitingly new perspective on a variety of political views that demonstrate a powerful dynamic between each assembled under the same roof.

Of course, such a large number of works cannot agree to everyone’s taste, including mine, and some I found to be absurdly unappealing. For example, a corner on the second floor was densely occupied by a series of objects and diagrams/drawings that were part of the Times Exchange series by José Antonio Vega Macotela. The Mexican-born artist’s working method essentially consists of exchanging favors with the inmates of a prison in Santa Martha Acatitla. Since the artist is able to move freely around the outside world, the prisoners ask the artist to teach a daughter how to read, beg a father for forgiveness, etc., while they do what Macotela asks, such as record their movements within the prison throughout the day, let the artist take a fingernail sample from each, etc. The results on display are mundane keepsakes: densely collaged cigarette butts, clothes preserved in wax, and so on. Macotela’s project, sure, is noble; but from an artistic point of view, the work strikes me more like a scrapbook from a Peace Corps expedition than art that can stand firmly on its own. The only element that adds any interest to this series is his philanthropic gesture; unfortunately, the actual objects themselves show nothing of this elaborate back story.

Some works did stand out, one of which is Dark Day, 2012, by New York-based artist, Abigail DeVille, a piece that is installed halfway down the John S. Wotowicz Stairs, which connect the third and fourth floors of the museum. Almost as soon as I set foot on the first step, the persistent murmur of the visitors’ chatter ceased, replaced by what sounded like construction noise heard through a closed apartment window that acted like a prelude to what I was about to see. I could still hear these sounds as I walked down the isolated staircase then paused in front of an old, zip-locked copy of The Stargazer Handbook that had been stuffed into a rectangular hollow of the same size in the wall as if to stop a leak. I laughed as I recalled the prints from Lutz Bacher’s The Celestial Handbook scattered throughout each floor of the Whitney that were neatly framed. This recollection proved to become a large influence in my experience of the main installation, located a few steps lower, that looked like Beetle Juice’s demolished and abandoned closet in the projects at some ghetto-ized borough of New York City.

An opening had been carved out of the wall opposite the window side and the space inside was a complete dump, where most of the surfaces were painted in crisscrossing as well as parallel black and white lines. A torn piece of a wall leaned against one side, behind which was a collection of about 35 empty vodka bottles, a heap of a wooden fence-like structure leaned across a corner, parts of what remained of a spring bed mattress with other pieces of destroyed furniture hung helplessly from a broken ceiling, and a ray of uncannily warm domestic light shone down from what would be the floor above. This sight (site), familiar to those who pass by any run-down neighborhoods, still exists on the periphery, just like the way in which urban housing issues are pushed to the side by city councils in favor of more “pressing” ones; after all, the work doesn’t even get an actual floor for display, but the artist had to dig out and create a space for it. However, through its contextualization within an art exhibition as well as the painted lines that force the viewer’s attention to an otherwise common trash hole, DeVille’s installation demands serious inquiry into why and how such sights/sites exist. Then a pristinely intact painting of a woman holding a small rabbit also positions the work within an art-historical context: art is always a product of its societal conditions.

Once I made it to Brazilian artist, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machato’s, O Seculo (The Century), 2011, I realized that the noise I heard in the staircase was not from DeVille’s work. The 9:37-minute video begins with a view of a run-down but still empty section of a street. The camera remains fixed there, while for about five minutes, various objects—ceramic bowls, florescent lights, chairs—are thrown furiously into the frame and smashed to pieces by invisible hands from the right. Later, smoke appears from the same side, while the fixed frame still does not allow the viewer to see its source. The loop ends when its blank canvas becomes filled with chaos.

Another: London artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2011 portrait series is something of a rare specimen in the midst of new-media-installation art that fills most of the triennial. The initial impression of its out-of-placeness immediately gives way to the beauty of each painting; hiding in a fairly monochrome palette of brown, black, and other dark tones, the faces peer out at us, each eye reflecting that striking glimmer of titanium white. As if only the presence of whiteness can mark the existence of otherwise dark bodies, her larger canvases also leave small areas of the blank canvas exposed.

Overall, The Ungovernables offers a solid and diverse selection of works, without leaning heavily toward any singular political position. There is something for everyone, that is, unless you still believe in the concept of a pure and autonomous art. That said, The New Museum’s triennial is not for the naïve art-lover: be prepared to come face to face with difficult questions.