Featuring work by 23 artists and collaboratives, with installations and performances reaching outside the museum to the sculpture park and even into Boston, the show opens Jan. 22.
The deCordova Biennial, initiated after executive director Dennis Kois joined the museum in 2008, is a revamped version of the annual summer exhibit the museum staged for 20 years. Deitsch organized the first biennial show, in 2010, which featured the work of 17 artists and was met with critical acclaim.
For the 2012 exhibit, Deitsch and Goodman visited close to 100 artists’ studios, then worked with an advisory committee to pare down their list. The biennial has no ascribed theme, but Goodman said a common motif emerged: “hybrid practices.’’
Indeed. You could call most of the biennial participants “slash artists.’’ Their descriptions are full of slashes: installation/performance/photography/ just about anything else.
In Matt Saunders’s work, painting crosses over to painterly photography; Megan and Murray McMillan use set design, installation art, performance, photography, and video to make lush video installations that comment on art history.
“So much of the biennial highlights emergent practices, people doing things that are different or new,’’ says Deitsch.
There are many more ephemeral, off-site, or performance-based works than ever before. Deitsch says that 17 or 18 artists will actually be featured inside the museum; the rest will be in the sculpture park and beyond.
Conceptual and activist artist Steve Lambert has a big, gaudy sign asking viewers to vote true or false about the statement “Capitalism works for me.’’ The sign will travel from the museum around the Boston area. In February, Caitlin Berrigan, a performance artist who stages participatory actions, will set up camp in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. She’ll host a panel discussion about class, cultural production, and food, and she’ll incite a food fight based on class distinctions, using donated food that would otherwise be disposed of.
“At the end of the day, it becomes a giant action painting,’’ Deitsch says.
