Nov. 30, 2005 

2006 WHITNEY BIENNIAL LINEUP
The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced details of its 2006 biennial. Titled "Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night," Mar. 2-May 28, 2006, the show is organized by Whitney curator Chrissie Iles and Walker Art Center deputy director and chief curator Philippe Vergne. Taking its title from François Truffaut’s 1973 film, the biennial "explores the artifice of American culture. . . the irrational, the religious, the dark, the erotic and the violent" (Iles) and "a space between pre- and post-modernist parameters -- somewhere between day and night, between the history of forms and the forms of history" (Vergne). "In this twilight zone," Vergne intones, a bit more comically than he may have liked, "many things are called into question or obscured."

In their press announcement, the curators go on to discuss some of the "intertwining and overlapping strands" of the show: Uncertain Identities and Unfixed Images; Shock and Awe; Lavish Abandon; An Archeology of the Present; and Screen Life. The exhibition also includes a separate presentation by the Wrong Gallery gang -- Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick, who are also organizing the next Berlin Biennial.

Among the many other eccentricities in the biennial are an anonymous performance by Momus, playing an "unreliable tour guide"; work by Otabenga Jones & Associates, a Houston collaborative named after Ota Benga, an African pygmy supposedly brought to the U.S. in 1906 and exhibited in the Bronx Zoo; a puppet show put on collaboratively by Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Rodney Graham, Laurent Berger and the Williamsburg "art band" Japanther; and a recreation by Mark di Suvero and Rirkrit Tiravanija of a peace tower di Suvero originally made with the Artists’ Protest Committee in 1966 in Los Angeles.

The exhibition also features an extensive section of "political" art, including multiple broadcasts about the war in Iraq by Deep Dish Television, and the original drawing for Stop Bush by Richard Serra.

Participating artists include Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Dominic Angerame, Anonymous Collection, Christina Battle, James Benning, Bernadette Corporation, Amy Blakemore, Louise Bourque, Mark Bradford, Troy Brauntuch, Anthony Burdin, George Butler, Carter, Carolina Caycedo, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Paul Chan, Lori Cheatle and Daisy Wright, Ira Cohen, Martha Colburn, Dan Colen, Anne Collier, Tony Conrad, Critical Art Ensemble, Jamal Cyrus, Deep Dish Television, Lucas DeGiulio, Mark di Suvero and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Peter Doig, Trisha Donnelly, Jimmie Durham, Kenya Evans, Urs Fischer, David Gatten, Joe Gibbons, Robert Gober, Deva Graf, Rodney Graham, Hannah Greely, Mark Grotjahn, Jay Heikes, Doug Henry, Pierre Huyghe, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Day Jackson, Cameron Jamie, Natalie Jeremijenko, Daniel Johnston, Lewis Klahr, Jutta Koether, Andrew Lampert, Lisa Lapinski, Liz Larner, Hanna Liden, Jeanne Liotta, Marie Losier, Florian Maier-Aichen, Monica Majoli, Yuri Masnyj, T. Kelly Mason and Diana Thater, Adam McEwen, Taylor Mead, Josephine Meckseper, Marilyn Minter, Momus, Matthew Monahan, JP Munro, Jesús "Bubu" Negrón, Kori Newkirk, Todd Norsten, Jim O’Rourke, Otabenga Jones & Associates, Tony Oursler and Dan Graham with Rodney Graham,   Laurent Berger and Japanther, Steven Parrino, Ed Paschke, Mathias Poledna, Robert A. Pruitt, Jennifer Reeves, Richard Serra, Gedi Sibony, Jennie Smith, Dash Snow, Michael Snow, Reena Spaulings, Rudolf Stingel, Angela Strassheim, Zoe Strauss, Studio Film Club, Sturtevant, Billy Sullivan, Spencer Sweeney, Ryan Trecartin, Chris Vasell, Francesco Vezzoli, Kelley Walker, Nari Ward, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson, the Wrong Gallery, and Aaron Young.

The exhibition is sponsored, as usual, by Altria, the cigarette company.

Contact wrobinson @ artnet.com