Whitney Biennial's Funny, Muddled Jumble Offers Trash, Penguin 2006-03-02 10:47 (New York) (Review. Linda Yablonsky is an art critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.) By Linda Yablonsky March 2 (Bloomberg) -- The 2006 Whitney Biennial has a hole in its head. Stepping off the elevator at the top of the show, which opens today at the Whitney Museum of American Art, visitors will find themselves staring through an enormous gap cut into the facing wall. Its edges are ragged enough to suggest that disaster has struck. Unfortunately, the effect is not an illusion. For an exhibition that purports to bring some clarity to the chaotic jumble of recent art, the show is stubbornly out of focus -- unsettled rather than unsettling. Considering its title, ``Day for Night,'' perhaps this was to be expected. The term refers both to the camera filter that allows filmmakers to shoot night scenes in daylight, and to the 1973 Francois Truffaut film that tells the story of a movie about a movie. In other words, this ``borderless'' biennial of American art resides in a nebulous world poised between one reality and another, where day (the known) can easily be mistaken for night (the strange), and nothing is as it seems. Then what is it? That's what makes this show -- the first to include non-American artists among its 101 contributors -- really interesting. Fugitive Trash The top floor, the one with the hole, is the dullest, with the greatest number of artworks whose meaning is ``fugitive,'' as current parlance has it, and which use insubstantial materials. That's another way of saying it's made of trash. A young New Yorker, Gedi Sibony, presents sculptures that include a piece of kicked-back carpet and a black plastic bag carefully draped over a plywood post. Suggesting a site either under construction or already abandoned, the installation is more about what used to be than what is -- whatever that might be. Rudolf Stingel, on the other hand, pointedly mocks the heroic in art with an extremely large painting of himself, based on a black-and-white photograph. In it he appears antagonized by the art world's constant demand for the new and spectacular. Or maybe he just wanted to be big. In the context of a show that emphasizes the neither-nor, it's hard to tell. Emperor, Penguin If the show's weakness is painting, its great strength is its many videos, starting with Pierre Huyghe's stunning Antarctic adventure, ``A Journey That Never Was.'' Filmed last year at the South Pole and in Central Park, it concerns the artist's search for an albino penguin and is as awesome as it is absurd. Francesco Vezzoli's trailer for a nonexistent remake of a 1970s pornographic film, ``Caligula,'' is supposed to be a satire of art-market excess. If it doesn't quite read that way, it's still laugh-out-loud funny. Not funny at all is Paul Chan's shadow-puppet animation, with falling bodies and objects projected on a rectangle of slowly changing colored light on the floor. It's part heavenly and part hell. Billy Sullivan's slide show of his social life, recorded over 20 years, is more lulling, as if Nan Goldin had suddenly turned sweet. But Anthony Burdin, a Californian who lives and works in his car, may have made the video that best expresses the zeitgeist of this show: noisy, messy and puzzling. Rogue's Gallery The place where the biennial really comes together is in ``Down by Law,'' a rogue's gallery of art about, or by, so-called maladroits and ne'er-do-wells. It's quite enjoyable. It was assembled by the Wrong Gallery, a curatorial team headed by the artist Maurizio Cattelan. Does this make curating -- editing, interpreting -- yet another kind of installation art? Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne, the two curators who organized the biennial, would like us to think so. Or perhaps their show is an accurate reflection of our time and isn't supposed make sense. But isn't it art's job to try? Take that big hole in the wall. Inside is a hypnotic work by Urs Fischer, a Swiss who lives parttime in Los Angeles. It consists of two slowly revolving tree branches that have been cast in bronze and painted silver. Suspended from the ceiling by chains, each has a burning white candle affixed to its tip. As the branches turn, the candles drip, creating two interlocking white circles on the floor. It's a lovely metaphor for the art-making process. Because you have to step through the wall to see it best, the work feels as if you've stumbled on something secret. Meanwhile, its exposed mechanism seems to say there's nothing that special about art. It just depends on how you see it. The biennial runs through May 28 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Fifth Ave. at 75th Street, (1)(212) 570-7710. The corporate sponsor of the show is Altria Group Inc., with additional support from Deutsche Bank AG. --Editors: West (mvh/jjb/rjw). Story illustration: For more information about the Whitney biennial, see http://www.whitney.org. For more cultural news from Bloomberg, see {MUSE }. To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Yablonsky at fabyab@earthlink.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff in New York at (1)(212) 617-3486 or mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net. [TAGINFO] MO US CN DB US CN NI MUSE NI CULTURE NI REVIEW NI ART NI IMAGING NI MED NI ENT NI LEI NI FILM NI TVNEWS NI COS NI GEN NI CHARITY NI METRO NI NYC NI NY NI US #<551666.162549.2005-11-10T14:40:00.96># #<610788.2500008.2005-11-10T14:40:00.96># #<285437.3732357.2005-11-10T14:40:00.25># -0- Mar/02/2006 15:47 GMT