reviews lyon biennial
9th lyon biennial:
00s – the history of a decade
that has not yet been named
17 Septem ber – 6 January
IN RyAN GANDER’S LECTURE LooSE ASSociATionS (2002),
PERfORMED AT THE LyON BIENNIAL, THE BRITISH ARTIST
SPEAKS ABOUT ‘DESIRE LINES’, WHICH ARE MADE IN PARKS
WHEN PASSERSBy fIND A MORE DIRECT ROUTE Of GETTING
fROM A TO B THAN THE PATHWAyS PROVIDED. GANDER
LINKS THIS IDEA TO THAT Of PATHS WHICH LEAD PEOPLE
THROUGH DISORIENTING SPACES: ‘DISTRESS LINES’ IN
HOSPITALS, OR THE yELLOW LINE THAT WINDS THROUGH,
AND EVENTUALLy OUT Of, LONDON’S LAByRINTHINE
BARBICAN ESTATE. THIS yEAR’S LyON BIENNIAL, TITLED
00S – THE HiSTory oF A DEcADE THAT HAS noT yET BEEn
nAMED, COULD HAVE USED A DISTRESS LINE. IT WAS A
BIENNIAL fULL Of GOOD WORK, BUT ITS ORGANISATION
LEfT EACH INSTALLATION ORPHANED AND UNDEVELOPED
– WHICH WAS UNfAIR BOTH TO THE ARTISTS AND TO THE
CURATORS WHO CHOSE THEM.
The biennial is structured as a ‘game’ with two sets of ‘players’, the The exhibition’s title, in questioning how to name and characterise
curators and the artists. Exhibition curators Stéphanie Moisdon and Hans our decade – especially at a point of ‘now’ midway through – flags up the
Ulrich Obrist, and artistic director Thierry Raspail, chose 49 curators, from important issue of the biennial’s relation to history and contemporaneity.
major art centres and less established areas, who then each selected an Should the biennial speak for its time? Is it meant to be a stocktaking?
artist he or she believed best represented the decade. Daniel Birnbaum Pitched at a level above a group show, the biennial historically claims a
chose Tomas Saraceno; Andrea Viliani chose Seth Price; Stefan Kalmár duty of care to a larger subject – functioning as a comment on its host
chose Dot Dot Dot magazine; Joanna Mytkowska chose Minerva Cuevas. city, as in Destroy Athens, or on the construction of the canon, as in this
It resembles, in the words of one of the curators, a jukebox. This pluralism year’s Documenta. In this regard the Lyon Biennial succeeds despite itself,
brings in a variety of work – from the established American artist Wade in encapsulating and showing the limitations of a recent curatorial trend.
Guyton’s sinuously mechanical abstractions in painting and sculpture The History of a Decade… is an example of meta-curation, or exhibition-
to the Indian artist Sheela Gowda’s photographs of discarded grinding making strategies that foreground the role of the curator, such as curator
stones in India, which track a changing way of life – but it forestalls any Jens Hoffmann’s first show at the London ICA, in 2004, Artists’ Favourites,
coherence. Transitions from room to room are abrupt, and ideas are cut in which 39 artists each chose a work by a favourite artist, or his later show
short before they can be expanded upon. When connections are made London in Six Easy Steps (2005), which tapped other curators to organise
in the gallery plan, they are often overly literal. Guyton is placed next to shows that represented their London art scene. Hoffman and Tom Morton,
Kelley Walker, for example, whom he often shows with. Nathaniel Mellors’s one of the curators of Six Easy Steps, are both Lyon ‘players’, choosing Tino
terrific allegory of history, time travel and theology (The Time Surgeon, Sehgal and Charles Avery respectively – two frequent choices for both
2007) – equal parts Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-End (1967), Monty Python’s curators. Any detractors of this year’s Venice Biennale who took Robert
Life of Brian (1979) and Paul McCarthy’s Sauce (1974) – appears next to a Storr to task for showing his old favourites would have a field day in Lyon,
film by Adrià Julià, which is also quite loud. However The Time Surgeon’s though championing whom you believe in really needn’t be a crime, and
above: Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2007
Romantic rural setting would have been wonderful next to Dave Hullfish Sehgal and Avery both showed good works. (installation view). photo: © blaise adilon
Bailey’s studied exploration of cities and modernity. (This biennial makes As the figure with whom this approach is most closely associated, it is
facing page: Seth price, Edition, 2006,
you think like a curator; the big conversation opener being, ‘Who would perhaps Obrist himself who best represents the period, with his delegation,
video projection, dimensions variable.
photo: © blaise adilon. Courtesy
you have chosen?’) his decentralised exhibition and event production, and his interest in what
the artist and electronic arts intermix
is made of art (new ideas, new opinions, new theories, new books, historic
interviews, historic films, historic events) as much as the making of art. This
hyper content-production can be exhilarating, such as the fantastic 24-
hour talks marathon Obrist organised at the Serpentine in 2006, but it can
also churn out thought without elucidating or reflecting on its significance.
The Lyon Biennial brings the finest talent to the room, but forgets to slowly
make its way through it. Melissa Gronlund
artreview 192
November_REVIEWS.indd 192 28/9/07 15:20:48
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