A violin solo competes with a box fan—the appliance pushes air through a hole in the wall between galleries. Refrigerator condensers hum in sync, complementing the monotone of a didactic video. Why do messages in bottles continue to bob across the Aegean? Do migrants trace a similar path in hope of amelioration? Water bubbles over moldy icons we’ve been conditioned to hail permanent: statues and skyscrapers. Farts billow on cue by a rooftop smoke machine, rain or shine. This is the clash and symphony of the 75 artists at the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

Tape swings like a necklace from the ceiling, fluttering through a reflective spool and the magnets of a reel-to-reel recorder. As you near the precarious object, voices increase in volume: “the right to choose,” “wealth disparity,” “equality,” “diversity,” “dignity,” “privatization…” During an artist residency aligned with the last presidential inauguration, Marcus Fischer recorded the concerns of his fellow residents and played the returns on January 20, 2017.

In a neighboring gallery, more mechanical motions loop. Agustina Woodgate condenses the ubiquitous network architecture of institutional spaces (hospitals, schools, factories, offices) into a one-room installation. Symmetrical groupings of gray clocks divide the room and cleverly reflect an organizational chart. Her work mirrors, yet subverts the industrial “master/slave” terminology where one device has control over others. The interior clock hands are sandpapered, monotonously scraping away their own numbers as they tick. This is choreography of autonomy attained through erasure.

Time, in its many measures, paces throughout the Whitney. 2019 marks the second biennial during the current political regime and the event comes weighted with expectations. Critics may have anticipated a more hyperbolic response from artists and curators, but conversations around humanity’s most pressing issues at home and beyond Americentrism are embedded in the works on display. Who is the authority on how intensely one demonstrates? Prays? Makes art? How one dissents shouldn’t be of primary concern; most crucial is whether one chooses to do it at all.

7/12/2019