"
WHAT AN enormous relief it was, amid this ever-growing obsession with
diagnosis and prognosis, to come upon an exhibition that insouciantly
refused to take the art world’s pulse. This was my reaction to the
Brucennial, the latest installment of a counter-Biennial, mounted in a
space on Bleecker Street in March and April by the art collective known
as the Bruce High Quality Foundation. What was inspiriting about the
Brucennial was the organizer’s evident unwillingness to advocate any
particular curatorial or critical strategy, or to draw any conclusions
about the fix in which we find ourselves. With a catch-as-catch-can
selection process, the Bruce High Quality Foundation produced an
emboldening, virtually uncurated gathering of several hundred artists.
Superstars such as David Salle and Julian Schnabel were hung
cheek-by-jowl with relative unknowns and total unknowns (though there
was certainly a crowding of art stars in the front of the multi-level
space that was once a theater). The names of the artists were casually
penciled on the wall next to their works, and the many paintings hung
high on the walls could be identified, if you were lucky, from images on
a printout.
There was the general feeling of an art world mosh pit, with works
displayed every which way and no space in between. The Bruce High
Quality Foundation— which participated as a collective in the 2010
Whitney Biennial and partnered for the Brucennial with Julian Schnabel’s
son Vito, now a well-known art dealer and art world entrepreneur—is
certainly aware of the fashion-forward potential of this particular
brand of dissolute comedic swagger. I have friends who are inclined to
dismiss the show as pure slacker chic, and they are not entirely wrong.
But whatever quibbles I may have with the Brucennial, I found that, of
all the big surveys I saw this spring, it was the one in which I
recognized the chaotic pluralism and occasional richness of the art
world I still call home."
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