There are almost no numbers in this year's show.

The Triennial of the New Museum is, as always, an international exhibition. About one-third of the artists in the 2021 edition are from North America, and the rest are from other places, so it is impossible to truly reflect the national sentiment in a simple way. However, it does reflect what its American curators Margot Norton and Jamillah James thought their audience might need or want. Some people even read about the "soft water and hard rock" that opened last month as the "Biden Biennale".

As early as 2018, the last version of this show was called "Song of Destruction". An important keyword used by curators to define the purpose of the exhibition is "propaganda." During Trump’s presidency, the show’s curators tried to convey a sense of urgency to their core American audience in their statements.

Comparing this rhetoric with "soft water and hard stone", the latter feels very much like a post-Trump exhibition (even though the curator selected most of the 40 artists during Trump's presidency). The title of the show comes from a Brazilian proverb about how the power of gentleness will eventually smooth out the toughest obstacles and celebrate progressive action. Everything makes people feel very quiet and withdrawn, as if something happened.

Kate Cooper, body alias (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

This program continues the feeling of seeking the foundation of folklore and handicraft in other large-scale international survey programs recently. In addition, there is a stronger sense of retreat, staying away from anything that is too superficial or explicit, perhaps a response to overcrowding or overreaction. -Mediated culture.

I think that the retreat from the medium is reflected in the complete disappearance of photography as a medium, both conceptually and otherwise. In a video played in Gaëlle Choisne’s collage environment "The Palace of Love-Love to Love" (2021), apart from a clip by the rapper Nicki Minaj, there is nothing suggestive of pop culture, which is intertwined Marx's famous saying.

Gaëlle Choisne, the Palace of Love-Love to Love (2021) installation drawing. Photo by Ben Davis.

Except for Kate Cooper’s looping video that seems to show fragments of digitally rendered anatomical structures in and out of focus, there is hardly anything that can send out a digital signal. When it goes in and out of darkness, her image flashes with electric orange accents—reflecting "black body How to use invisibility". Both works are purgatory.

There are also very few paintings. The paintings in the exhibition always give people a feeling that the image is blocking something, whether it is the turbid and fuzzy panoramic canvas of the palace lady deliberately unresolved by Ambera Wellman in Canada. It is also a black and white landscape painting by the American painter Cynthia Digno. When you read the label, you will find that it is a place of violence during the Civil War.

Details of Ambera Wellman's Strobe (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

On the other hand, there are many things with decay or biological matter that seem to evoke real physical properties, and there are many things that evoke broken machines, as if they are marking the feeling of post-industrial wreckage left by people's fanatical entertainment. Digital economy.

Gabriela Mureb, Machine #4: Stone (ground) (2017). Photo by Ben Davis.

These include actual functional art machines in the outstanding work of the Brazilian sculptor Gabriela Mureb, the best of which is named for the exhibition: a small installation placed on the floor, tapping slowly and relentlessly A stone fills the fourth-a floor gallery with a soothing rhythm.

The windows on the first floor of the new museum facing Bowery are decorated with artwork by British artist Samara Scott, decorated and covered with gargoyles (Lonely Planet): unintentional tendril ribbons of sticky trash. And, as this public-facing work advertises, there are many things in it that either look like it is made of garbage, or are actually made of garbage-the decorative nature transplanted to the wall or pedestal ruins.

Samara Scott, Gargoyle (Lonely Planet) at the front of the new museum. Photo by Ben Davis.

There is a sense of savoring minors everywhere, small and precious things carry epiphanies that may or may not come. So you will find the work of British artist Ima-Abasi Okon, who inserted the bronze ventilation grille into the calf-high wall and stuffed some jewelry inside.

Ima-Abasi Okon, put something in the air: the indispensable Mahalia Jackson blows up DJ Pollie Pop's chopped and twisted interpretation of Wagner's Valkyrie Journey-the military entertainment complex dubbing [Jericho Speak Life! ]*(No legacy)* (2017). Photo taken by Ben Davis. In the ring display discovered by American artist Rose Salane on the beach in Atlantic City, jewelry reappears as the theme. Each one is a humble, ordinary thing, displayed next to a label, which lists the readings it gave on the metal detector, and copied a copy from the "intuitive reader" (aka psychic) A report on its history. This is a fascinating gesture, but surprisingly, there is so little interest in reading. Readers will not find major murder stories or heinous romances; just a half glimpse of a fictional normal life.

Ima-Abasi Okon, put something in the air: the indispensable Mahalia Jackson blows up DJ Pollie Pop's chopped and twisted interpretation of Wagner's Valkyrie Journey-the military entertainment complex dubbing [Jericho Speak Life! ]*(No legacy)* (2017). Photo by Ben Davis.

Details of Rose Salane, 60 detected rings (1991-2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

Brazilian artist Ciara Ianni’s “labor map”, 14 smallest graph paper works, each of which represents the work route of a worker in the new museum through a clear graphite line. This may be the most powerful work on the show-and it's not that powerful. In view of the wave of labor struggles sweeping the museum world, especially the new museum, it is important to compare the postures of different workers. However, mentally, it is far more ironic than being outspoken.

There are six moving video works in the exhibition. If you watch them all, it will take about one hour and 50 minutes in total. Most of them have lyrical preaching with the current international artistic style, and the video prose digresses from the topic. The 3D movie by Danish film producer Amalie Smith speculates that the origin of life is the cutest among them, winding twists and turns in science and archeology.

The work of Harry Gould Harvey IV (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

I like many things here. I really like the anarchist altar of Harry Gould Harvey IV. I like Evgeny Antufiev's wallpaper and the homespun golden mask and holy grail displayed in the mock museum. Over time, Christina Pataialii's earthy tones, illegible semi-abstract paintings grew in my mind, and the weirdness of potter Erin Jane Nelson (Erin Jane Nelson) The same is true for the relief of explosive pottery fragments.

Thinking about the whole thing, my mood is very calm. Although this is not the best advice, this sensitivity also feels purposeful. It may reflect moments of intellectual and emotional exhaustion in the culture, doubts about great hope, and despair of honest communication. I also found that although many of its art strategies feel like a response to the tiring and increasingly dystopian attention economy, I also want to know whether it doubles back to the individual in the museum art’s own noble material idiom. Planning the cultural world is one of the isolated heritages in the last year.

The highlight moment of the exhibition is on the ground floor. In the lobby gallery of the new museum, it always feels like a prologue and an afterthought. For this triennial, the space provided a pair of installations, one by Peruvian artist Arturo Kameya, and the other by Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho from the United States and the Philippines.

Arturo Kameya, who can afford ghosts (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

Kameya's first work was a room filled with faded paintings, paper cuts and props: a low table, a small garden enclosed by a fence. Who can afford more ghosts (2021), as the so-called, means "ghost dinner", and has a complicated opposing narrative of the recent political history of Peru, which is difficult to interpret without some research . Its faded colors make you feel as if you are in an abandoned theater.

Then, sometimes, it becomes lifelike. A mechanical fish on the plate twitched from time to time. The cup on the table moved suddenly, as if haunted. These alternative animated touches made me laugh. The shock of the shocking entertainment is disproportionate, as if these comedic moments vent a secret flow of emotional energy beneath the show.

Details of Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, Waves Moving Bile (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.

Then, in the next room, you will arrive at Waves move bile (2020), a group of soft rice paper heads floating on wooden sticks, shining slowly in the originally dark space. Likewise, a complex set of references are woven together-these faces refer to an image of a racist French monument that uses a naked Southeast Asian woman as an allegory of an "Asian colony", reusing its facial features for them Assume the mythological spiritual form from Filipino and Cambodian folklore.

Most importantly, this is just an unforgettable sculpture. It fits perfectly with the gentle idiom of this show. But I realized that after a second, these floating heads were especially prominent to me because I felt they were facing me.

They made me realize that the whole show made me feel unsure where or what to watch. Many of the objects here feel as if they are facing any or all directions at the same time, or are images without a true center. This sensitivity is indeed both troublesome and unforgettable, and it speaks to the present. A feeling of bewilderment runs through the entire "soft water and hard rock", down to the physical level, and even the paper ghost feels unusually decisive and vigorous.

"Soft Water Hard Rock" is on display at the New Museum in New York until January 1, 2022.

By: Barbara Calderon, March 19, 2021

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