So yesterday I reviewed the latest edition of the Corcoran Biennial based on my experience of the show. This time around I'm going to try a more traditional approach. However, I must set the stage.
Close to Home is an exhibit of contemporary art today. The Web site states:
The 48th Corcoran Biennial: Closer to Home is organized on the basis of a preference for work that reflects ideas or raises questions relevant to the biennial series as it has recently evolved. After two Biennials that highlighted a great deal of multi-media, interactive, and, at times, even raucous high-tech art, the organizing curators of Closer to Home decided to let the pendulum swing in the other direction.
This exhibition explores the work of artists who, for a variety of reasons, utilize primarily low-tech and traditional media. This conception was inspired by the belief that a significant amount of important contemporary art examines the flipside of the high-tech coin through earnest individual expression, historically resonant aesthetic dialogue involving, for example, portraiture and landscape, the reinvention or revival of “old-tech” methods, or the poetic use of prosaic materials. While not a guiding theme of the project, domestic issues do figure into some of the featured work, suggesting yet another interpretation of the exhibition’s title.
Advanced technology was never precluded from inclusion, and several of the artists finally selected for the exhibition do use video, digital media, or computers to create or present their work. Nonetheless, all of the work in this exhibition shows evidence of a strong relationship to more traditional modes of artmaking, evoking the familiar beginnings—or home—of visual art practice.
The pendulum definitely swung in the other direction in comparing this show to the 2003 edition. That show was exciting whereas this one is mostly forgettable. This isn't to say that the work in the show is bad, but the overall exhibit doesn't pop the eye. In fact, it reminded me a great deal of the recent group show at the Arlington Arts Center. I felt like the show was an adequate survey of contemporary art, but again, that isn't necessarily a good thing. Outside of my show favorites (Chakaia Booker, Colby Caldwell and Adam Fuss) I didn't feel that any artist's work made an impact. I'm probably being unfair to the show, and I am anxious to read other viewpoints - especially Lenny Campello and Michael O'Sullivan of the Post - but I found the last biennial to be remarkable. Two years later and I can remember in vivid detail several different rooms. Anyway, what I'd like to do is discuss each artist and give a quick thought or two about the work.
Reverend Ethan Acres

The stepson of an itinerant preacher in Alabama, the Reverend Ethan Acres has united ministry, performance, and contemporary art to create a wholly unique and potentially mysterious trinity. His installation for Closer to Home comprises three handmade inflatable sculptures along with felt crows and an effigy of the artist that plays a recording of the sermon he performed on the exhibition’s opening night. Acres sees this grouping as a metaphor for his own heart, with the encompassing rotunda gallery serving as the vessel.
Um, ok... I can make that work in my mind. But honestly, while in the rotunda I felt that I was in a wacky New Orleans carnival gone bad. Unfortunately, I couldn't force myself to think of anything other than inflatable "sculptures," or the house down the street from where I live that with every holiday has a "sculpture" of a Santa Claus or Easter Bunny or whatever in their front yard. It just didn't click for me.
Chakaia Booker

Chakaia Booker’s sculptures are constructed of salvaged rubber, primarily old tires, which she cuts into strips and then wraps and folds into myriad forms. Depending on the age, brand and construction of the tire being used, a given sample may be blue-black, oxidized brown or any shade or hue in between. Moreover, their surfaces display surprising patterns and can vary from a flat- to a high-gloss finish. The worn treads are particularly evocative, and Booker emphasizes their rich textural quality through her deft deployment of repetition.
I'm not sure why the description focuses on such details with Booker's piece because quite honestly I didn't even notice them. For me, the material, composition, physicality and smell of the piece were more than enough to send my mind racing. I didn't care about the color or tread patterns. I only cared that I was looking at a very large wall sculpture made from tires that smelled like tires. It's a piece that produces a unique experience and was a highlight of the show.
Matthew Buckingham

The inspiration for Matthew Buckingham’s slide installation, One Side of Broadway, is Rudolph De Leeuw’s book of photographs entitled Both Sides of Broadway, published in 1910. De Leeuw’s aim was to document every building on both sides of Broadway, from Bowling Green to Columbus Circle. Desiring to reanimate De Leeuw’s project, Buckingham set out to rephotograph the same eighty-four city blocks but chose to record only the east side of the street. Using the unwieldy excess of content contained in exhaustive typologies like his and De Leeuw’s, he speculates on history’s truths and reflects on overlooked possibilities. In Buckingham’s installation a voice-over quietly conveys historic details. The commentary notes the window from which the first motion picture of New York was taken, remarks on the competition between Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers, as well as the unsolved disappearance of motion-picture camera developer Augustin Le Prince, and draws the viewer’s attention to the architecture of New York’s first movie houses.
I promised I tried to give this piece the attention it deserved. On one pass I think I even stood and watched the video - and listened to the voice-over - for about 30 seconds. But that's all I could muster. I wasn't interested in looking at the slideshow and I could barely hear the reading. I think I would like to read more about the piece, but I don't care to see it or hear it. It could be a very fine piece but it didn't grab me.
Colby Caldwell

For many years Colby Caldwell has used his family’s old home movies as the jumping-off point for creating manipulated still images and videos that express his fascination with storytelling and personal history. He is particularly fascinated with the interstitial moments in these films, when the camera might pan, lose focus, or unintentionally capture random bits of the landscape between setup shots. For Caldwell, these fragmentary images of happenstance and accident reveal more of the past than all of a given film’s intended images combined. The artist’s embrace of the accidental also extends to his series of colorful, gridded abstractions entitled How to Survive Your Own Death. This series is the result of a software malfunction that he has explored repeatedly over several years.
Now, I can watch a Caldwell video for much longer than 30 seconds. Colby's videos have a realness and quirkiness to them that appeal to me. They don't try to be too much. They are videos and that's all. He doesn't try to elevate video to something it is not... and I appreciate that. Add on top of that wonderfully colored and patterned digital prints that are so very different from the videos but actually a product of the videos, and then I'm riveted from multiple angles. That's what makes Caldwell's work the best in the show: there's different work but it's all the same really. I feel that he gets the most out of his medium.
George Condo

George Condo is as well known for his exquisite, painterly portraits as he is for the bizarre cast of archetypal characters that inhabit them. His subjects are classically posed, dramatically lit, and surrounded by conflated fragments from the history of painting, such as bubbles, glass bottles, drapery, vegetables lifted from the still-life table, and vague empty settings to better project the subject of the picture. In the end, however, the entire world and inner life of his subjects derive completely from his imagination.
I'm not sure what Condo adds to this show. His characters (and don't we see a lot of characters nowadays) are unusual and strange, and I'm sure they are painted well, but so what? What makes his work standout from the crowd? This isn't to bash Condo's work, I enjoy it just fine, I'm more interested in why he was chosen. There must have been many, many more artists who could have filled this slot. Or perhaps not...
OK, given that I don't have much to write about this week I'm going to focus on the Corcoran Biennial. I've discussed the first five artists in alphabetical order and on Wednesday and Thursday I'll talk about the remaining 10 artists. I can't stress enough how eager I am to read other people's impressions. If readers have seen the show and want to pen a review I would be glad to publish it (email me). I think this exhibition is important to our arts community and should get as much attention as possible, good or bad.
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