Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial)

The 12th Istanbul Biennial is a quiet and contained exhibition which rejects the seduction of the spectacle characteristic of most biennials. In line with its institutional departure, the show’s grounding in the work and practice of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres establishes a solid and unique conceptual framework. Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial) is divided into five sections, each also ‘Untitled’ followed by a description in parentheses. This emulates Gonzalez-Torres’ naming practices in order to instil a sense of timelessness and never-ending possibilities for meaning-making. The underpinning premise of the biennial is to invest life and politics into a minimalist aesthetic in the spirit of Gonzlaez-Torres’ understated creations; deceptively sparse, yet teeming with political potency. Curators Jens Hoffman and Adriano Pedrosa have revived this method of art making in a concentrated and tightly-curated exhibition thematically linked to specific works of Gonzalez-Torres’.

Untitled (Abstraction) contains works which complicate the sterile environments of Minimalism and the Modernist grid with elements of the social, political, personal, historical and, quite simply, the everyday. The works in this section appear to unravel abstraction, inject it with subjectivity, and then reconstitute it as a strange and provocative hybrid. Works such as Geta Bratescu’s Vistigli from 1978 and Lygia Clark’s Bicho sculptures from the 1960s retrace a history of art which effectively infused elements of the everyday into essentially abstract forms, thus blurring the divisions between the two.
Themes of love, loss, homosexuality and the AIDS epidemic are explored in Untitled (Ross), the section named after Gonzalez-Torres’ candy spill work. This section abounds with quite literal and anthropomorphic interpretations of gay love, along with works which directly reference Gonzalez-Torres’ presentations of this idea, including Kutlug Ataman’s Forever. However, there are also some noteworthy pieces, including ceramics from the Ardmour Ceramic Studio in rural South Africa which depart from the more self-indulgent pieces. Made by locals, these depict didactic narratives, presented in a series of confronting literal and symbolic images, to educate locals about HIV and AIDS awareness.

Untitled (Passport) envisages new ways of looking at the world and understanding its physical, political and psychological boarders. Works such as Ataman’s Su and Kirsten Pieroth’s Weltkarte (Map of the World) completely subvert the imagined boarders of identity and political geography in order to reinterpret these constructs. Meanwhile, solo presentations like Simon Evans’ deal with the quest (and inability) to locate identity within an increasingly globalised and disjointed world through playful panderings to obsessive idiosyncrasies.

The writing, rewriting and non-writing of history are played out in Untitled (History) which explores the tasks of recording, censoring and interpreting the past. This section presents contemporary artists who reflect on history and its constructions. Works like Julieta Aranda’s plexiglass cube containing pulverised 20th century history books, as well as Claire Fontaine’s replacement of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle with a brick are anarchic acts which undermine Western practices of empirical recording of knowledge and events. Furthermore, Taysir Batniji’s Suspended Time is a metonymic freezing of history by presenting an hourglass on its side – static and unchanged.

Finally, Untitled (Death by Gun) concludes the biennial on a sombre and disconcerting note. Many of the works in this section were made before Gonzalez-Torres’ time, and thus trace a timeline of gun violence and its portrayal through visual media as far back as the American Civil War. The proliferation of gun violence and the social apathy which now accompanies it is reflected through the plethora of gory, gruesome and graphic images. The fact that much of the audience are merely ‘unsettled’ by these images attests to our engrained societal desensitisation, and hence inaction, to such violent subject matter. It is a fitting conclusion to an overall thoughtful, stirring and dramatically understated exhibition.

In a rapidly expanding art world that is being invaded by biennials, art fairs and overblown international events, it is easy to lose (or never even gain) the thrill of an exhibition in the attitude of ‘yet another biennial’. Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial) has snapped art world inhabitants out of their biennial sugar coma with a heavy dose of thoughtful, unassuming and compelling contemporary art. Its grounding in the works and philosophies of Felix Gonzalez-Torres offers a fresh and effective way of conceptualising biennials. It steps away from the acutely political, and embraces the artist’s whimsical spirit, injecting the biennial model with what Pedrosa calls, “a sort of poetic angle that maybe enchants and enlightens you, maybe makes you think differently about the world.” This ambition has been achieved with integrity and humility in what many are referring to as an ‘intellectual biennial’; an exhibition which effectively stimulates the interaction between abstraction and politics, formalism and subjectivity, high art and the everyday. Above that, the exhibition has reintroduced an important artist and a provocative, and enduring, concept of art making to a new generation, a new century, of arts practitioners. That is the gift of Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial).

There are way too many artworks for me to share all the images. So check out the Biennial website for artwork images http://12b.iksv.org/en/sololar.asp