Saltz and Smith cite Postcommodity’s Whitney Biennial Installation

Citing works by Rafa Esparza, An-My Lê, Jordan Wolfson, and Postcommodity, critic Jerry Saltz dubs the 2017 Whitney Biennial the “most politically charged” edition in decades. Curated by Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, the exhibition includes Postcommodity’s 2016 four-channel video, A Very Long Line, which earns notice from Roberta Smith in the New York Times:

Some artists approach the unvarnished bluntness of the 1993 Biennial, with complexity. “A Very Long Line” — a four-channel video installation by the collective Postcommodity involving blurry images of tall fences shot from a moving car — takes over the walls of a small gallery, capturing the viewer in a noisily rattling cage. When you learn that the fences are on the Mexican border, the piece becomes a visceral metaphor for the experience of feeling, or being, trapped, that is now the fate of so many undocumented immigrants.

The biennial, opening on the heels of Donald Trump’s election, doesn’t feature the new president much, but as Saltz writes, he’s implied in Postcommodity’s work. “I wondered if Trump was there, haunting the collective Postcommodity’s riling four-channel video of the border fences between Mexico and the United States.”

The biennial is on view through Jun 11, 2017.