Three Miamians at the Whitney: A look at the artists' work in New York

BY BRETT SOKOL

Special to The Miami Herald

Being tapped for New York's Whitney Museum Biennial -- a sweeping survey of ''where American art stands today'' -- isn't an instant ticket to art-world fame and fortune. But it is the next best thing. Just ask Miamians Hernan Bas, Dara Friedman, Luis Gispert and Mark Handforth, all of whom saw their international profiles, as well as their artwork's price tags, soar in the wake of their inclusion in Biennials over the past decade.

The trend should no doubt continue for this year's selectees: William Cordova, Adler Guerrier and Bert Rodriguez. Three is a record number for Miami, more than any other burg outside New York and Los Angeles. And for those seeking a quick indicator of this city's post-Art Basel status, it's a sea change from the 1980s and '90s, when the only South Floridians to receive the Biennial's curatorial nod were (posthumously) Carlos Alfonzo and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

TRAGIC EMPTINESS

Of course, the Biennial acclaim doesn't come without a bit of headscratching. Standing inside Cordova's wood frame installation, The House that Frank Lloyd Wright built 4 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark -- a replica of the Chicago apartment in which Black Panthers Hampton and Clark were killed during a 1969 police raid -- Biennial co-curator Shamim Momin earnestly tries to explain to me Cordova's evocation of tragedy amidst ``a space of emptiness.''

It's not hard to see why Cordova -- or anyone concerned with social change -- would look to the unfulfilled legacy of Hampton, a charismatic leader as frustrated with Chicago's traditional power brokers as he was with activists who confused fist-in-the-air posturing with the harder task of community organizing. But even Hampton might have had a hard time discerning how his rich life was writ large in Cordova's wooden beams, particularly for Whitney visitors unfamiliar with the Panthers' history.

Reached at Houston's Glassell School of Art where he's in residency, Cordova declined to elaborate on his work. But Momin is happy to rise to his defense: ''Art is always about what you bring to it,'' Momin says. ``If it's just a finite story, then it's not art. It's an essay.''

Suddenly Momin brightens:

''You look so tan!'' she exclaims over my shoulder. Los Angeles heavyweight art dealers Timothy Blum and Jeffrey Poe have appeared, in town to man their booth at the Armory art fair. But while the pair is quick to offer congratulations on her Biennial choices, Momin senses another agenda.

''You like it even though your artists aren't in it?'' she teases. ``You totally got on my case about that last time.''

Blum shrugs good-naturedly: ``We're the establishment now.''

To ensure a presence in the 2010 Biennial, Blum and Poe might consider adding a few more conceptual artists to their roster. While many critics have griped that some corners of her Biennial resemble a hurricane-smashed Home Depot, Momin remains unapologetic.

''I think there's a lot of sentimentality in critics of a certain generation,'' she counters. ``They have a romantic idea of what art should be: The good old days when dudes slapped paint on a canvas.''

To be fair, not all the Biennial installations look like construction sites. Adler Guerrier's untitled (BLCK -- We wear the mask) mines the same turbulent era of U.S. history as Cordova's piece but to a much more engrossing -- and poignant -- effect. Guerrier wondered why there hadn't been a forceful artistic response to the 1968 riot that tore through Liberty City. So he created BLCK, a fictional art collective whose faux-vintage posters and sculptures sprawl across a wall while an old TV set plays news footage of civil-rights marches being superseded by Black Power protests. Hampton appears onscreen, as does Mark Rudd, one of the prominent Anglo radicals Hampton dismissed as a ''masochist'' for courting violence.

Guerrier is just as conflicted by such dueling impulses, and he quotes and riffs on the period's insurrectionary slogans in BLCK's placards even as he ultimately rejects them in favor of a more nuanced strategy.

''The project is about rescuing the reputation of Liberty City,'' Guerrier explains, ''connecting it to very noble deeds, many done by people acting without a monumental light being shined on them.'' Only 32 years old, he pored over 1968 microfiche editions of the black community-focused Miami Times and The Miami Herald, revealing a neighborhood whose proud homeowners and diverse, thriving nightlife have been all but forgotten.

Next: Bringing BLCK to a hometown audience. Snatched up by Ingalls & Associates following the announcement of his Biennial inclusion, Guerrier has become a free agent since the gallery's March closure.

''A commercial gallery isn't necessarily the best vehicle to present one's larger ideas,'' he sighs. Instead, galleries are simply ``where you try and make a living.''

THE JESTER

Guerrier might take a cue from Bert Rodriguez, who has made a lucrative art form out of poking fun at the folks his dealer, Fred Snitzer, is presumably wooing -- from serenading collectors with a punk rock-crooning mariachi band, to waving his manhood at them through a hole in Snitzer's gallery wall.

''The more I stick it to the man, the more love I get back,'' Rodriguez chuckles.

For the Biennial he hosted In the Beginning. . . , therapy sessions he conducted inside a specially constructed white cube-cum-office, complete with a waiting room, comfy chairs and the de rigueur ''therapist's plants.'' To his amazement, museumgoers immediately booked all 3 ½ weeks of his 45-minute sessions. It was time to play doctor.

''Everything I do has a bit of the horns with the pitchfork under the surface,'' Rodriguez explains. ''I'm always joking, hoping something sincere comes out of the jest, never really expecting it. But here it did.'' In fact, he may have outsmarted himself. The tissue box he'd bought as a prop quickly went into use as more than 100 patients ``opened up and used me as a sponge. I don't know if it was the surroundings, me, or simply that there's nowhere to run. We're in this cube together. People unburdened themselves.''

Seeing seven patients a day, he barely caught any of the Biennial art: ``I was too busy working!''