Ryan Trecartin’s 2015 Triennial at the New Museum

The Triennial is an exhibition the New Museum presents to the world every year to focus, from a curator’s point of view, on the very new trends of contemporary art.
This year’s edition, run by 34-year-old superstar, L.A.-based artist Ryan Trecartin and former Rizhome director Lauren Cornell, is titled Surround Audience – and that’s exactly the purpose of the show.
All the artists were born in the 80′s, so the thoughts and works have all been generated, lived and spread in our Internet era and they’re meant to be engaging in many ways.

DIS The Island (KEN), 2015 Mixed-medium installation Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

DIS
The Island (KEN), 2015
Mixed-medium installation
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

At the ground floor we find an immediate contrast between two kind of realities constantly reported online: American factories in China in one hand, and the technologically-advanced products they manufacture for wealthy professionals’ well-being in the other. On one side Li Liao’s clothes and labour issues from his period spent in an Apple factory to gain enough money to buy the same Ipad he was producing.
On the other, the DIS installation is a continuation of one of the latest focuses in the United Kingdom right now, an art always one step closer to design, architecture, and bio-awakening, in terms of rethinking housing and living experiences, with links to Ugo La Pietra’s mid-Seventies projects.

Frank Benson, New Museum

Frank Benson
Juliana, 2015
Painted Accura® Xtreme Plastic rapid prototype
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

The second floor can be considered the iconic symbol of the whole show, being welcomed by a life-sized 3D sculpted reproduction by Frank Benson of Juliana Huxtable, the transgender artist, party organizer and nightclubber standing in the middle of the room as a New Age Earth goddess, surrounded by works where the artist depicts herself in avatar-like forms, or describes a kind of new gender street manifesto.
All of this is backed by a new video by Ed Atkins, where two human-shaped figures embrace one another, disappearing and reappearing each time with a different date written on their forehead, as if they’re trapped in a constant limbo.
Moving on, there’s a stunning room with works by Peter Wächtler and a series of both photographic and sculptural works by Onejoon CHE about former Communist Regime statues and icons in rural South Korea, that can be easily mistaken for some Iraqi, Syrian or Ukrainian landscapes. This idea of a constant transformation in shapes and environments is a running theme on this floor, including Eduardo Navarro’s morphed turtle costumes for his performance in Central Park, and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s virtual recreation, rendered in black and white, of the Mata Atlântica rainforest in Southern Brazil.

2015 Triennial New Museum

Installation view 2015 TRIENNIAL: SURROUND AUDIENCE
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

A very interesting thing in this Triennial is that the works shown reflect the actual trends of the young international art market. The same goes for the third floor, where the featured works are all about disintegration/accumulation. Olga Balema traps objects in water-filled plastic bags leaving them to rust, like a fading memory. The collage-based pictures by Njideka Akunyili Crosby present an accumulation of images from the artist’s Nigerian background that all together vividly compose a figure, as if it were a human image archive. On the same floor, we can see isolation capsules built by Nadim Abbas to face the next lethal virus .

Josh Kline, 2015 Triennial, New Museum

Josh Kline Freedom, 2015 Mixed-medium installation
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Among the others, probably Josh Kline’s Freedom is the artwork most in line with the show’s title and one of the most remarkable. Referencing the Zuccotti Park days, you’re surrounded by Teletubbies Cops with screens on their chests, from where people scream out for political transparency. These protesting voices are echoed by a fake Obama, actually a face-mapped actor, giving his inauguration speech declaring what most of the people asked for: the need to fight global climate change and launching a call for immediate action, pointedly holding corporations responsible for the financial collapse, and challenging bigots, homophobes, racists, and sexists.
Another artist to watch carefully is Guang Xiao, who draws inspiration from the tons and tons of images that the web pumps up endlessly, shaping her taste and influences. Here she juxtaposes repurposed camera equipment with constructed artifacts as photo shooting backgrounds to track what can be defined as an urgency to new techno-animisms.

Guang Xiao, New Museum

Guan Xiao
The Documentary: Geocentric Puncture, 2012
Mixed-medium installation, Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

There’s a lack of paintings in this floor (and more in general), except for Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Avery Singer and Sasha Brauning’s most recent works. This demonstrates the curators’ intentions of relating with works that are more responsive and interactive than the two dimensional image, and in most of them lines and figures are blurred and floating in a sort of meta space, always reminiscent of the Internet.
Video seems to help better developing this general feeling of constant flow of pictures and datas, as seen in the last production by Oliver Laric: 6 minutes of animated hand-drawn characters morphing one out of the other.

Avery Singer Untitled, 2015 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Avery Singer
Untitled, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

The fifth floor is also mostly about videos: Lawrence Abu Hamdan filmed sheikhs being instructed to deliver sermons about noise pollution, creating the surreal effect of listening to religious tenets of the Koran speak about the adverse effects of noise.

Bringing it back to the basement, Steve Roggenburg’s mad poetic ramblings of self, looking inside and outside at the same time, can sum up an exhibition about living in modernity mired in a steady drift, at times hanging on to the hope of a bright synthesis, at times just drifting away.

2015 New Museum Triennial: “Surround Audience”, New Museum, New York, through May 24, 2015

2015 Triennial New Museum

Installation view 2015 TRIENNIAL: SURROUND AUDIENCE
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

2015 Triennial New Museum

Installation view 2015 TRIENNIAL: SURROUND AUDIENCE
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Onejoon CHE, New Museum

Onejoon CHE
Statue of the Unknown Soldier in Heroes’ Acre, Windhoek, Namibia / Built in 2002, 2013–14
Digital C-print and fiber-reinforced plastic, Three Dikgosi Monument / Built in 2005, Gaborone, Botswana, 2013–14
Digital C-print and fiber-reinforced plastic, Statue of the Unknown Soldier in Heroes’ Acre, Windhoek, Namibia / Built in 2002, 2013–14
Digital C-print and fiber-reinforced plastic
Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Benoit Pailley

Nadim Abbas, New Museum

Nadim Abbas
Chamber 665 “Spielberg,” 2014–15
Mixed-medium installation

Discussion Un commento

  1. February 10, 2016 at 3:05 pm

    Comment’s author: gnneeg03/30/07 06:16:00 PM是的 人類是要合作才能幹大事的 只不過在這個時代 很多人單打獨鬥都可以幹出大事業 像許多哲學家 藝術家 音樂家 作家就是 當然快不快樂又是另一個問題 在工業化時代來臨前 一個人要嘛自個來或者和別人合作完成一個工作 可是福特在量產汽車後 人開始變成工廠公司裡的小螺絲 只要日復一日枯橾地完成一部分產品的一部分就好 於是工作只是為了生計 不再是取得滿足感 所以人類開始要玩一些兒童不宜的玩具才能滿足了 關於美女這個想法 正是人類無法脫離本能 可是本能失效的最佳示範 因為只有人類中的宅男 才會把時間浪費在上網看美女寫真 或者捉一些愛情動作片來安慰自己 卻不把時間花在上PUB釣美媚來增加自己的生育優勢( . )不過啊 最近一堆人竟然誤認我是阿宅 所以我也要問一下 請問有阿宅是幾乎完全不看卡通不看漫畫不看日劇不打電動的嗎 請問有阿宅可以當選同學會會長的嗎 而且還不只一次哦 請問有阿宅會熱愛大自然 每個月帶美媚去健行的嗎 請問有阿宅有本事一個人在不熟悉的歐洲北美洲亞洲大城市裡來去自由穿棱的嗎 不過對很多美媚來說 我只是個比宅男更無趣的好人 —大英有外借過展品嗎 外借有風險吧 故宮不是有個白菜什麼的 在外借到南部時時掉了個什麼的

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