2005 Traveling Western RV Biennial Art Show
The 2005 Traveling Western RV Biennial Art Show turns the biennial model into a mobile-home carnival of living artists, dead artists, gossip, art accessories, and nearly a million dollars of alleged value. Organized beside the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts, the project mocks the prestige architecture of contemporary exhibitions by relocating it to a luxurious RV for a single day. Its curator list--lawyer, bed-and-breakfast manager, gallery impresario, and empathic dog--destroys the solemnity of curatorial expertise while somehow making perfect sense for the American West. The visual packet's map-like RV graphic and chaotic roster intensify the work's collision of road culture, art-market absurdity, and itinerant spectacle. This is Williams's biennial as anti-biennial: democratic, ridiculous, parasitic, mobile, and more honest about art's carnival economy than most official exhibitions.
- DATE:
- March 5, 2005
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Essay / Critique
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Richard Reisman; Carl Fiacco; Tim Brown; Leo; Wally Hedrick; Dave Hickey; George W. Bush; Bill Gates; Bruce Conner
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- Hollowell Global-Mobile Institute For The Visual Arts; John Natsoulas Center for the Arts; Western Biennial of Art; Davis
- KEYWORDS:
- biennial as mobile-home carnival; anti-biennial realized; RV as prestigious venue; curatorial expertise destroyed by dog; itinerant spectacle; road culture meets art market; one day as sufficient duration