The 2022 Whitney Biennial opens with the theme "Quiet as It's Kept". The 80th Whitney Biennial is co-curated by Adrienne Edwards, curator of the museum's performance program, and David Breslin, chief curatorial program director, presenting a total of 63 persons/groups Artists, their active creations and reflections across generations and disciplines jointly focus on the challenges, complex situations and multiple possibilities that the United States is experiencing today.
"Our exhibitions don't do themes, but we do hunches, and the focus is on fostering a multi-generational dialogue," says David Breslin of how artists and projects are selected. Adrienne Edwards added, "Given the political and social upheaval of the past few years, the exhibition raises questions around the collective, is each individual 'me' representing 'us'?"
The yin and yang structures of the exhibition site are designed to be functional, and the dark galleries are filled with films and videos that reflect our disturbing and changing times. The upper level, with its dim walls and carpets, closed galleries and minimal lighting, exudes a restless, contemplative feel. A story below, plenty of daylight and white walls project a sense of openness and possibility.
The four Biennale artists introduced here are Yto Barrad, Leidy Churchman, Ralph Lemon and Pao Houa Her, they each took a very different approach to their artistic creation.

Yto Barrada

The work of multimedia artist Yto Barrada has been very active recently, most notably with a solo show at Mass MoCA in Berkshire. She also curated an "Artist's Choice" exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which deftly regroups MoMA's collection.

Yto Barrada explores issues of cultural identity using a wide range of materials and mediums, often addressing the role objects play in shaping or distorting historical narratives.

Born in Paris and raised in Tangiers, Morocco,Yto Barradais known for his multidisciplinary research on cultural phenomena and historical narratives. Through the performative nature of archival practices and public interventions,Yto Barrada's installations reinterpret social relations and the history of the underworld. She has spent years studying the dinosaurs that once lived in Morocco today, and how their fossils were excavated, exported, and falsified, and what these actions mean for national identity. After years of research,Yto Barradahas published a book with irony: as a tourist-friendly book, The Fossil Guide for Forgers and Aliens (Walther König) showcases the blackness of her work humor.

Yto Barradararely considers a specific medium when creating his work. "I love experimenting with materials, and in the creative process I often use things I've collected from all over the place," she says.
For the biennale, she contributed a two-channel video piece, "A Day Is a Day," with images taken side-by-side at so-called weather acceleration facilities in Miami and Phoenix, where fabrics and other materials are affected by harsh elements, testing them How to stay the same over time. "It's all about the aging and death of the material,"Yto Barradasaid of the scenes. "It's beautiful, but it's about the end of things." This may be her version of the traditional void found in Old Master paintings, reminding viewers that life is short. In this case, a time-based medium like film is perfect: it has a beginning and an end. As she puts it, "It's about letting go."

Leidy Churchman

Leidy Churchman's contribution to the Whitney Biennial is a 36-foot-wide triptych titled "A Walk in the Mountains," inspired by Claude Monet's Impressionist water lilies and 13th-century Zen texts.

LeidyChurchman is a painter whose many subjects include landscapes, advertisements, online videos, Tibetan Buddhism, nature photographs, scientific diagrams, and even the work of other artists. As all-encompassing as it may seem, Leidy Churchman's subject is decidedly personal, more like a browser history than an encyclopedia. According toLeidyChurchman: "Painting is part of a larger quest for consciousness, an quest to expand what is known."
Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" paintings, especially the eight fresco-sized pieces installed in the circular gallery of the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, have long been an important art-historical icon forLeidyChurchman. "I've wanted to do this for a while," the artist said of "Walk in the Mountains," a three-panel 36-foot-wide painting conceived for the Biennale that partially repeats Monet's series of works. The triptych also draws inspiration from the 13th-century Zen text "The Shanshui Jing".

The works created by Claude Monet, although often figurative, have no signature style or emphasis. Their talent is to take the everyday, even clichés, and turn them into something personal and noble. As the New York-based artist puts it, "What's more contrived than starting with water lilies? I think, I'll start with what I like about Monet and dig into it."
The swirling blues, greens and whites, as well as areas of pink in Mountains Walking, make for an influential misty landscape, but Claude Monet didn't stop there. These shades are covered by a grid of yellow, which is not just an appreciation for nature, the grid is what brings it into the conceptual realm. Claude Monet explained, "The painting is set on the feet of a claw-like animal associated with Buddhism, which is not exactly Monet's movements, which is a bit surprising and humorous, and they bring a kind of anger. protector energy."

Ralph Lemon

Interdisciplinary artist Ralph Lemon sits next to one of his mosaic-like works that use a very personal lexicon of images.

In a way, it's surprising that Ralph Lemmon has not been featured in an edition of the Biennale before this. Ralph Lemmon is an American dancer, company director, writer, visual artist and conceptualist. Raised in a religious environment, he developed his artistic creativity from an early age. Early in his career, Lemmon used painting as a source of expression, and as he discovered dance, movement as a means of physical expression.

The work Whitney exhibited is a set of his paintings, colored grids and small squares, mostly abstract shapes. A revelation even to art world insiders, they are seen as vibrant personal hieroglyphs.
"My paintings are private practice, most of which have never been seen," says Ralph Lemmon. "So I'm a bit conflicted." Biennale co-curator Adrienne Edwards, a trusted friend, persuaded him to attend. "It's alchemy. You start with nothing, then you experiment and it becomes something".
"These painting materials, ink, watercolor, acrylic and oil, I see them as experimentation and visual meditation," he noted. "In my creative practice, there is no hierarchy between mediums and disciplines, but the coronavirus lockdown has Times make performance difficult. "During the pandemic, I was mostly drawing," "While the pieces aren't technically related to dance, the way they flow has a sense of choreography," said Lemmon, who is best known for his The dance production, the massive Geography Trilogy, a dance production from 1997 to 3 continents, where elements of African American culture are mentioned, but in a private, secret way.

Pao Houa Her

My grandmother's favorite grandson - Goncoley is a 2017 image from Pao Houa Her's "My Grandfather Becomes a Tiger" series.

When she was three years old, photographer Pao Houa Her came to the United States with her family as part of a wave of Hmong immigrants from Laos. They ended up in Minnesota, where she lives today on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. "I had identity issues for a long time," she said. "I'm a Hmong girl who grew up in a remote part of America and watched TV and couldn't see anyone who looked like me. There's a real need to find yourself in this world, and I think photography really helps to do that."
She studied photography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and then earned a master's degree at Yale University. Focused on taking photos of the Hmong and culture, her initial work was more of a straight-up documentary style. "In photography, I started with a traditional education," she said.

But studying at Yale with stage masters like Gregory Crewdson encouraged her to move in new directions. "The photos are more conceptual now," said the artist, who is exhibiting at the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis. Her new work, ranging from landscapes and still lifes to portraits, sometimes includes appropriation of imagery.
For the biennale, Houa Her presents six series of images, including "My Mother's Flower", which deals with identity, displacement and longing. The collection references her mother's meticulous flower arrangements in an attempt to stay relevant to her culture, but it also incorporates images of Hmong women on dating sites who are sought after by Lao-American men as "pure." "To me," she said of flowers, "they seem to symbolize home."

Article Source:艺术与设计

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