Argentinean artist Martin Oppel achieved a multihued, glowing effect on the wall by using acrylic paint behind bricks made of foam in Untitled (Ruin, twilight) (2009). And hung throughout the space are 50 photographs from the late Italian artist and designer Ettore Sottsass’s “Metafore” series (1970-99) that depict poetic, lyrical constructions and performatory actions. Number 31, Lovers: Every Morning My Girlfriend Gets on the Subway, was photographed in the Israeli desert and shows a naked woman entering a hole in the ground with little more than thin pieces of wood representing a railing.

With its gothic feel and darker tone, “Hotel Paradies,” curated by Nadja Argyropoulou, an independent curator based in Athens, felt more like a nightmare world, but it was the strongest of the sections overall. Argyropolou deftly gathered many works that packed a strong visual wallop, including Polish-born Robert Kusmirowski’s D.O.M. (2004), a room-size re-creation of a graveyard, complete with a cemetery wall and fence, headstones, dirt, and a spooky soundtrack. One could also spend some time in a room lined with silver curtains watching several projected Kenneth Anger films on a loop, such as Lucifer Rising (1973) and, on a separate monitor, Mouse Heaven (2004).

Continuing the dark trip was the S&M-inspired Reverie (2009) by Greek artist Vassilis Karouk, a 16-minute, black-and-white video featuring a vampirish dominatrix tempting a fiendish-looking, groveling man reminiscent of the somnambulist character Cesare from the 1920s silent-film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

“Hotel Paradies” boasts one of the biennial’s most compelling works, a 30-minute, four-channel, stereoscopic-surround-sound DVD installation, The Ideoplastic Materializations of Eva C. by Zoe Beloff, that is very much worth sitting still for, even in the un-air-conditioned space’s oppressive heat (which biennial planners had hoped to avoid somewhat by staying open until midnight). Based on a series of 10 séances held by spirit medium Eva C., aka Marthe Beraud, in Algeria and Paris between 1904 and 1912 and documented in a book by German psychotherapist Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, the work is sexy, funny, and well acted. Beloff’s attention to detail and inventive approach — including providing 3D glasses — pay off in spades and hypnotize the viewer. Still, traditional media also manage to stand out in this section, especially in Krakow, Poland-based Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s trio of detailed paintings, the largest of which, Untitled (2009), depicts a trash heap with a washy multicolored sky, rendered with enviable skill and panache.

Rounding out the biennial is curator and writer Christopher Marinos’s “How many Angels can Dance on the Head of a Pin?,” which takes a more spiritual approach toward “heaven.” Mark Wallinger’s Threshold to the Kingdom (2000) is a projected video installation showing people walking through the automatic double doors of an airport’s international arrivals section. Accompanied by a recording of the well-known Miserere by Gregorio Allegri, the ingenious work may be one of the most literal translations of the biennial’s theme. In sharp contrast, a video by Athens-based collective OMIO, Descent 1 (2009), shows an individual trekking into a tomb-like cave while wielding a flashlight to nearly strobe-like effect. The installation Hunting for Pheasants (2007-08) by Christian Tomaszewski — comprising a maze-like structure of aluminum; a 40-minute video loop; and framed, hand-drawn posters, rendered in the style of the Polish Poster School of the 1960s and 1970s, that hang on striped bands painted on the walls — deals with the subject of historical and fictional victims of assassination. All in all, despite its arcane nature, the work is a visual treat mixing historical references, modern design, and the grim reality of contemporary life.

While not altogether a coherent whole, the second Athens Biennial has lots to offer, not least of which is the hope that even — or maybe especially — independent projects can still thrive in a climate of dwindling museum budgets and cost-cutting measures in the arts.