SITE Santa Fe Takes Leap of Faith

SANTA FE—International biennials tend to exude the placeless aura of airports. A group of artists, dealers, and collectors from all over the world converges, and it hardly matters if the exhibition space is in Venice, Istanbul, or Sao Paolo. But Santa Fe, New Mexico, has a bit more local flavor than most. It’s a compact, heavily touristed, deeply loved city shaped by a dramatic high-desert landscape, a charged relationship with Native Americans, and a tight, artistically inclined local community. Though this latter group is more closely associated with Georgia O’Keeffe and lesser-known, regional painters than with the international contemporary art scene, the art world does have a presence here, most significantly at SITE Santa Fe, which holds the distinction of presenting the only international biennial in the United States.

This year’s edition, which opened June 22 and runs through January 9, 2009, is the seventh in the series and carries the title “Lucky Number Seven.” It’s curated by former dealer Lance Fung — former director of Holly Solomon Gallery, owner of Lance Fung Gallery, and organizer of the “Snow Show” (which coincided with the 2006 Winter Olympics) — who follows internationally vetted curators Francesco Bonami, Bruce W. Ferguson, Dave Hickey, Rosa Martinez, Robert Storr, and most recently, Klaus Ottmann. The artists featured in each of these previous editions included many recognizable names, and the curators used the opportunity to express new exhibition concepts that explored and reflected waves of curatorial fashion, often questioning the function of biennials as a form.

Fung’s show represents something of a departure. His premise is to allow the exhibition to build itself with a democratic curatorial structure that, as noted in his catalog essay, is ultimately about the concept of “community.” He began planning for the show by contacting 18 curators at alternative spaces around the world — the Secession in Vienna; the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Power Plant in Toronto; and Ssamzi Space in Seoul, to name a few — and asking each to recommend artists. He selected 22 artists and collectives from among the nominees and commissioned each to produce an ephemeral “site-inspired” project. In January 2008, the selected artists all came to Santa Fe to develop a connection with the place and to forge a community among themselves — a process that is highlighted at SITE Sante Fe by a multi-channel video documentary that chronicles the making of the biennial’s works with interviews with the artists.

Fung has gambled on socially based work by some unknown, unrepresented artists, many of whom are making their U.S. debuts. It’s an international group, with all but one — the collaborative team of Rose Simpson and family members Eliza and Nora Naranjo Morse — coming from outside the area, and most artists coming from Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America, and points in between. Curiously, though, only three of the projects are by women — a gender gap that seems a major oversight in a show that so emphatically promotes democracy and questions traditional biennial structures.

The works are on display both in the SITE gallery, which has been reconfigured by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien into a meandering trail of angular ramps and irregular spaces, and in numerous locations throughout the city. All were made in Santa Fe and will be folded back into the city framework through public distribution, recycling, and entropy when the exhibition is over. Many will evolve over its run. Given this focus on process and interaction, as opposed to the market, it’s no surprise that the exhibition is visually understated and conceptually driven; outside of Nadine Robinson’s Tri-Christus, a splashy illuminated sign/sculpture installed on the SITE facade that takes the shape of three Xs, the works in the show are the antithesis of Hickey’s maximalist “Beau Monde” biennial of 2001.

During the opening weekend of June 20, I overheard two artists anticipating the critical reception of the exhibition. “Will the critics talk about the curator or the artists?” one pondered. It’s an astute question at a time when curators often come off as film directors with their names above the title. But here the works must be seen in the context of Fung’s curatorial structure, since none of the projects would exist without it.