Whitney Biennial 2024, New York
The Whitney Biennial may have never been so attuned to its radical time and imbued with an almost existential gravity, informing us about the state of the world while also providing numerous clues about the role of art and how younger generations attempt to reinvent themselves through it.
Conceived by the two curators Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, this 81st edition brings together 71 committed artists around the question of reality. Placed under the aegis of an acceptance, that of the competition of our world with artificial intelligence, the journey of “Even Better Than the Real Thing” immediately encounters its own aporias. How to speak of a world that eludes us, how to defend the right to singularity without falling into a flattening of differences? How to acknowledge injustice, the absence of repair without engaging in insurrection, how to think of radicality without war? Finally, in a society of efficiency, how to compete and assert one’s difference with the flawless rationalization promised by artificial intelligence?
With a selection of artists committed to take into account this new reality and propose, in their own way, to take advantage of it, the Biennial deliberately positions itself on the side of attention and invariably brings the sensitive to the heart of the debate, even inventing its own humanism. Perhaps the one that, having surpassed the necessary anti-humanism to make idols collapse, clings to a faith that guarantees it. A rescue anchorage in a world where the truth is not an answer?
In terms of forms, monumentality makes its grand return, an inevitable effect in light of the exhibitions that marked the year 2023 with a predominance of total installations as effective on social networks as they are immersive and impressive in action. Kiyan Williams, Carolyn Lazard, Torkwase Dyson, or Rose B. Simpson thus mark this edition with large-scale creations whose symbolism, whether expressive or abstract, immediately impresses the retina and gives voice to ideas that seek to assert themselves without overshadowing others.
Behind the spectacular symbolism of the already emblematic pieces of this edition, which immediately announced its intention to stage dissensions and provoke debates, there is the feeling of artists’ desire to depict a world whose continuous explosion in human relationships they perceive. A wavering that necessarily passes through the new barometer of social success; social networks, whose terrible importance as well as infinite fragility instill a sort of tragic suspense capable of striking down on one’s life or that of one’s loved ones. A chain reaction like the one that haunts any viewer of Christopher Nolan’s recent “Oppenheimer”, winner of the Oscar for Best Film of the Year, whose concomitant success in the United States also reveals much about this scaling up of globalized concerns related to the consciousness of a single being. This law of a possible chaos, a continuous explosion permitted by the very nature of the physical links that unite things, fascinates much more by the ability of humans to consider it as a risk than as a limit.
An existential uncertainty that reveals the depth of its irony; in a period where there is constant talk of political correctness, where everyone is more concerned than ever with the perception of others, it is the principle of precaution that is being undermined, decency and moderation lose their value to give way to radical positioning and the staging, whether sincere or played, of confrontation.
As a consequence of this intensification of divisions, a certain melancholy and a bittersweet irony of self-attention emerges. A true portrait of an era that artists can also embrace, revealing sometimes the preciousness of a discreet, solitary, or group practice that turns into (or at least stages) obsession. Thus, the surprising success of the portraits “xhairymutantx” by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s. Generated using artificial intelligence, they question the role of its protagonist, Holly Herndon, a mythical, spectral, and polymorphic figure of the Internet. A necessarily collective creation as it is nourished by millions of events and discussions born on the Web, these images with their baroque fantasy appearance oscillating between lyricism and banal everyday life perfectly illustrate the enthusiasm of a generation whose imagination has been fed by heroes with double identities, reproducing a constant in digital worlds, the dual reading of an intimate world and its even more intense fracture facing the wall of the world’s normality. Melancholy is also found in the emphasis on expressive painting and the devastating visual efficiency of Mary Lovelace O’Neal, who turns each of her subjects into the protagonist of a story that traverses time and issues, akin to the whales in her “Whales Fucking” series.
The dimension of detachment, sacrificed in this hanging, will hopefully take on the importance it deserves in the years to come. A gravity that can find limits for lovers of a contemporary art which has reached in recent years a level of intellectual specialization matching the academic profiles of many of its authors. A little dilution of the message in its own communication, as the generous but harmless installation by Demian DinéYazhi, “We must stop imagining apocalypse / genocide,” whose visual ease may whatever guarantee the efficiency.
A reflection of an era that seems to mirror the great societal upheavals of the 1970s, where, faced with the deterioration of political relations between nations, populations, and leaders, calls for globalization and performative thinking. And in this perspective, perhaps the least obvious and most encouraging dimension of this Biennial is found, which, despite its appearances and its grounding in gravity, in its attentive openness to the sensibilities of all and undeniable generosity.
This “dissonant chorus” told by guest artist Ligia Lewis regarding the journey (repeatedly taken up in the event’s communication) may well reflect the consideration, if one wishes to avoid entrusting thought solely to artificial rationalization, of the heart of a new humanity. A heart that, far from beating in unison, perhaps shares, through the organic body, the last chance to think about the bond, a chain reaction which, unlike that of nuclear explosion, would recall the obviousness of a humanity that can only survive by taking it into account.
