Modern Painters | May 2007
2nd Moscow Biennale
Multiple Venues
The 2nd Moscow Biennale, organized by Joseph Backstein and titled “Footnotes on Geopolitics, Markets, and Amnesia,” sprawled through some 40 exhibitions at venues scattered all over the city. Exhibitions consisted of solo shows by “special guests” and smaller “special projects,” as well as five core shows, put together by a roster of well-known international curators that included Daniel Birnbaum, Rosa Martinez, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Nicolas Bourriaud. The main events were mounted in two sites. “USA: American Video Art at the Beginning of the 3rd Millennium,” curated by Birnbaum and Obrist, occupied an empty storeroom at TsUM, a fancy department store in the city center; viewers had to walk past shiny cosmetics displays and rows of expensive clothes to reach the show. The other venue was no less compellingly unusual, though far less accessible. On the 19th, 20th, and 21st floors of the Federation Tower, a yet-to-be-completed skyscraper located in the city’s “business district,” a brand-new neighborhood 20 minutes by metro outside the city center that at present remains a massive construction site, one could find the exhibitions curated by Backstein, Iara Boubnova, Bourriaud, and Martinez (with Fulya Erdemci), although the installation was such that each of their efforts blended seamlessly into the next, rendering all distinctions between them moot.
Viewers of gentle constitution tended to enter the Federation Tower somewhat dazed, thanks to a hair-raising trip via a temporary external elevator on what developers claim will be the tallest building in Europe. The first work encountered wisely used the view as its backdrop, and in so doing set an anxious tone. Dan Perjovschi, a fixture on the biennial circuit, had covered two adjacent corner windows with his signature doodles. Looming behind such scrawled witticisms as think big moscow size matter, more is more etc., and a cartoon depicting one medieval cathedral asking another, do you like feng shui? was a vast expanse of land, punctuated by cranes and the shells of office buildings. This image of a city in flux colored the rest of the show and the Biennale overall. “If you’re going to hold an exhibition whose stated aim is to explore the place of art in our globalized, forgetful, capitalist world, what better place than a modern-day Tower of Babel rising out of the petrodollar-fueled bacchanalia of Moskva-City?” a reporter wrote in the Moscow Times.
If the venue overshadowed the art at Federation Tower, it was not merely the incredible views. One had the distinct feeling that the shows there embodied Rolodex curating at its worst: it was littered with predictable biennial choices like Perjovschi, Artur Zmijewski, Carsten Nicolai, Kutlu? Ataman, Anri Sala, Elmgreen and Dragset, Superflex, and Keren Cytter, or trendy up-and-comers like Meredyth Sparks and Loris Gréaud. Predominant was video and large-scale, bombastic installation art like Carmella Gross’s Aurora (2007), which consisted of that word spelled out in pink neon attached to a huge, curving wire structure; in this context, works with a live performative element stood out. Yuri Leiderman’s 2007 piece Geopoetics 7 (Liberation of Odessa) involved three black men drinking and talking to one another (but ignoring inquisitive viewers) in a makeshift lounge area, while a black-and-white video of ’40s-era Soviet soldiers played on a small TV set in the background. The somewhat cryptic tableau seemed to be commenting on immigration issues, but it was unclear if the work had a more specific target than simply asking viewers to contemplate fairly obvious questions surrounding immigration. Like many of the works on view, Geopoetics was presented with a wall text that offered title, date, and artist name but little else, exacerbating a certain frustration with the confusing, haphazard nature of the four shows as seen in toto.
The selection of artists in Birnbaum and Obrist’s show at TsUM seemed even more desultory, particularly when one considered that their “USA” featured videos by more than half of the artists participating in the “Uncertain States of America” show, which, like the Flying Dutchman, seems doomed to travel from one country to the next until the end of days. Appalling installation decisions stood out: a video by Paul Chan was labeled as 1st Light—and even projected onto the floor in the manner in which 1st Light is meant to be shown—when it was clear to viewers who know the work that a different video was being played. This gross abdication of curatorial oversight displayed a stunning lack of respect for artwork by two professionals who, in this case, appear to have sent a stack of DVDs from the last show they curated in exchange for a paycheck.
The argument for showing “usual suspects” at biennials is that local audiences have not had an opportunity to see these works. As uninspired as the main shows were, attendance, during the first week at least, was strong, particularly in the video show, where people laughed out loud at a video by Kalup Linzy (subtitled in Russian). Such encounters lend weight to this argument but do little to cure the biennial fatigue that plagues more seasoned artgoers. The “side” projects of the Moscow Biennale provided some relief. Tightly curated exhibitions like “Petroliana” (a thoughtful group show that reflected on the insidious effects of the oil trade) and “Left Pop” (a show that consisted primarily of works by British artists, exploring the prevalence of revolutionary iconography in contemporary art) provided an antidote to the overly loose “Footnotes,” while exhibitions of local Russian artists offered a few intriguing surprises. Yuri Albert’s solo show at the Era Foundation featured dryly cynical text pieces describing unrealized conceptual art projects, such as planning an exhibition that takes place in the viewer’s imagination only, because no exhibition is ever as good as the one you anticipate seeing. Albert’s approach might have benefited the organizers of this Biennale, as the catalogue, promotional materials, and buzz all promised a far more compelling show than the one that transpired.
—Claire Barliant