Given a choice between two plush bathrobes hanging near the entrance to Walker Art Center's new show, which would you choose? They are identical except for the word monogrammed on their backs.
One says "Us."
The other says, "Them."
Do you see yourself as an insider or an outsider? Will you stand with those who belong? Or with those who don't? The existential dilemma so cleverly illustrated by Gary Simmons' 1991 bathrobes percolates through this ambitious installation from the museum's collection. It's a broad array of sculpture, photos, prints, drawings and installations spiced with videos, sound installations and an occasional painting on themes of sexual and racial identity, mortality and time, globalization and such daily headlines as abortion, war, terrorism and homeland security. On view for the next two years, the display will be refreshed periodically with alternative objects or new acquisitions.
Called "The Living Years," it showcases art made after 1989, a political watershed marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the putative end of the Cold War and China's stifling of political expression in Tiananmen Square. While a few of the artists deal directly with big-picture politics, most focus on personal moral quandaries and treat global issues obliquely if at all.
The title alludes to the heap of trouble, frustration and inadequacy that individuals often confront when monumental change happens. The show opens on an ominous note with five small black paintings by the Japanese artist On Kawara, each marked in white with a date in January 1989. For more than 40 years the artist has measured his existence by making one such painting every day. Each takes up to nine hours to craft and, when finished, is stored with a copy of that day's newspaper. Strung out on a wall, the paintings seem like such a waste of life, but they do raise the insidious question of whether our days amount to more than his black holes in time.
Nearby sits a tea crate topped with a soggy-looking pile of paper pulp marked with Chinese characters. A 1987/1993 sculpture by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, it is a literal deconstruction of the history of Chinese painting and Western art, represented by books on those subjects that Huang subjected to two minutes of sloshing about in a washing machine.
Next, Glenn Ligon deals hauntingly with how attitudes toward race and sexuality have -- or have not -- changed over time. Printed in stylized 19th-century typefaces, his five prints purport to be title pages, broadsides and testimonials about the life and experiences of a gay Negro man and his encounters with the white race. In their quiet way, these are among the show's most affecting pieces, their mournful eloquence enhanced by their antique format.
