Page 88 - Time_International_2019

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TimeOff Art

EXHIBIT
State of the art

By Wilder Davies

very Two years, The whiTney
Museum of American Art in New
York City presents a survey of
E contemporary art. Throughout
its nearly century- long history, the Bien-
nial has been a fertile ground for conver-
sations about social issues and cultural
tensions bubbling beyond the gallery
walls— occasionally erupting into protest,
as in 2017, when a controversial painting of
the body of Emmett Till sparked a debate
about institutional racism. Rujeko Hockley
and Jane Panetta, the co-curators for the
2019 Biennial, have assembled a show that
neither shies away from this history nor
provokes for provocation’s sake. The ex-
hibit is diverse: a majority of its works are
by artists of color, half by artists who iden-
tify as women. These six pieces embody its
breadth and complexity—and, in turn, that
of many of the issues facing America today.

△
DONKEYS CROSSING THE DESERT, LUCAS BLALOCK
Blalock’s surreal digital collage is one of the Biennial’s largest works, mounted
on a billboard outside the museum. It’s accompanied by an augmented- reality
component that can be viewed through a smartphone by downloading an app
called Donkey Business. Blalock’s uncanny, digitally manipulated still lifes,
like this rendering of three donkeys, straddle the line between the real and the
artificially rendered, a boundary that is becoming more and more permeable in
an increasingly digitized world.

▷
NATIONAL TIMES,
AGUSTINA WOODGATE
In Woodgate’s installa-
tion, which reflects on
the relationship between
labor, control and time-
keeping, a row of “slave”
clocks lining a gallery wall
are controlled by a “mas-
ter clock” in a system cre-
ated during the Industrial
Revolution to regulate the

△ workday. But over time,
THE VILLAIN, JOHN EDMONDS the clocks fall gradually
Edmonds, a New York City–based photogra- out of sync, and a layer of
pher, is conscious of the history of representa- sandpaper Woodgate has
tion of black bodies in his medium. In images attached to the minute
like The Villain, he subverts assumptions hands scrapes away
about identity. With a sensitivity to light and the numbers, rendering
color that makes his portraits exude a gentle a seemingly infallible
warmth, Edmonds renders his subjects, many system useless.
of whom are queer, as icons in their own right.

86 Time June 3–10, 2019