PRESS ABSOLUT - L.A. International:Ten Years After or Now We Are Six By Peter Frank This year marks both the tenth and the sixth anniversary of the Los Angeles International Biennial. By the calendar, ten years have passed since the Biennial debuted in 1993. Being a Biennial, however, the event has already occurred five times, and this is thus its sixth occasion. (Of course, 2003 marks the eighth and fourth anniversary of the Absolut Los Angeles International Biennial, the artocentric Swedish company having begun its invaluable sponsorship with the Biennial’s sophomore effort.)What’s significant, however, is not the candles, much less the cake, but the phenomenon itself. We have to marvel at the ability of such an ambitious, and admittedly ungainly, project to recur even this often and this regularly. The Biennial is an idea whose time has come, and its usefulness, to Los Angeles and the art world, remains undiminished. But necessity is the mother of invention, not the guarantor of survival. Someone has to organize the damned thing, (odd) year in and (even) year out, and so far, someone has. But someone else has to participate, the more someones the better, and so far, the majority of Los Angeles’ serious contemporary galleries have thrown their lot in with the Biennial. Of course, certain galleries maintain (or newly find) their diffidence. But that is inevitable. Perhaps it is testimony to L.A.’s status, recently established but now secure, as an international center for visual-art discourse that enough galleries of import can excuse themselves at any one time from participation without kneecapping the Biennial’s prominence or breadth, much less its chances of surviving. Indeed, the emergence and maintenance of a phenomenon like the Biennial shows that a distinctive condition characterizes the Los Angeles art scene. The scene’s size, variety, sophistication, international perspective and worldwide artistic contacts are great enough to provide the Biennial with the size and variety required to justify such an undertaking, but not so great as to obviate it or render it unwieldy. Whereas something like the Biennial would disappear into the vastness (not to mention the politics) of a primary center such as New York or London, Los Angeles provides an adequately open ambience – open both in geography and in attitude – to provide the Biennial its relative prominence, as well as its ever-remarkable display of pan-gallery cooperation. Los Angeles is an international art center with or without the Biennial, but the Biennial helps show what kind of art center Los Angeles is: adventurous, curious, and genial – even in these less-than-economically(-not-to-mention-spiritually-)secure times. It does help that, as far as visual art goes, L.A. is not a company town. Even its abundance of art schools, prime in the nation, points to another industry’s 800-pound-gorilla status. At its worst, it is true, L.A. art is Hollywood’s pet or court jester. But Hollywood’s patronage has always been too spotty to keep L.A. art at its worst; and, it must also be averred, that patronage has also helped keep L.A. art at its best. There is, after all, a tradition of enlightened collecting among movie people going back to the days of Josef von Sternberg and Edward G. Robinson. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, countless artists have sustained themselves with back-lot day jobs (for which not a few of them were trained at the aforementioned art schools). Cinema and television are visual media first and foremost, and visual people are essential to their operations. Hollywood has long served to attract an influx of creative folks to the Los Angeles basin, so this town filled with foreign accents long before it filled with art galleries. The relaxing of immigration laws in the late 1960s loosed a further wave of émigrés on Los Angeles (a bit more, even, than most other American cities), and the children of these émigrés have grown up Angeleno, with access to artistic ferment and even education their parents never had. The definitive emergence of L.A. as an international art center a couple of decades back (around the time of the Olympics) was not simply the result of the right number and kind of New Yorkers and Chicagoans moving west; it was the result of the right artists gravitating from around the world to Venice and Silver Lake, downtown and West Hollywood. And it was the result of the right budding artists – artists who spoke one language to one another, another language to their parents – going in to and getting out of school and staying in town. By 1990, Los Angeles was a place where the foreign art was as likely as not made by residents.The Biennial thus does not make Los Angeles an international art center. It does not even mark it as such. It simply reflects, exploits, and feeds back to the internationalism of cultural discourse here. Los Angeles breathes artists in and out, breathing in painters from Armenia, sculptors from Andorra, installationists from Argentina, performers from Australia, digital artists from Austria, and draughtspeople from Antigua, while breathing out painters from Otis, sculptors from USC, installationists from UCLA, performers from Cal Arts, digitalians from Art Center, and draughtspeople from Cal State Fullerton. Some of the former stay forever; some of the latter leave forever. That respiration marks Los Angeles as a node on the international art network. The critical mass of artists that remains here, and the opportunities they now have to display what they do locally (no more inadequate, finally, than in most other art capitals), mark Los Angeles as a real and enduring place for visual art – no longer despite itself, but because. Is this globalization of artistic discourse in one place a positive gloss on the globalizing trend in culture and commerce? It is a positive development, and aspects of the larger globalizing picture help make it possible, but it exists independently of the World Bank, multi-national corporations, and any political trends towards or away from uni-, bi-, and/or multi-nationalism. Furthermore, it is not a result of recent multicultural trends in artistic theory and practice, but a force that, locally at least, has driven such trends. Nobody has purchased international character for the L.A. art scene, and nobody has preached it; it’s gotten that way spontaneously. It is this sui generis richness that the International Biennial seeks to reflect – and, yes, to exploit. Any number of "international artists" being shown this summer by participating Biennial galleries have brought their works in by hand. Their passports may vary, but their license plates don’t. They live here, by choice. They do, however, bring to the mix stylistic and attitudinal quirks they have cultivated as products of their cultures and/or native schools – or, in certain cases, as products of their cultures as modified by their exposure to the schools here. Their claim to international status is legitimate, as much in their practice as in their passports. Of course, one can argue that, worldwide, artistic practice is growing more homogeneous; but the shows in this year’s Biennial do as much to dispel as to support that claim. It doesn’t all look alike. Two other Biennial developments related to the above, and arguably not quite as salutary, bear noting. One is the inclusion in the Biennial mix-and-map of American artists – in group shows (thematic or not) with non-Americans, and in a few cases, in one-person displays. In these cases, however, one finds that these artists, even if L.A.-based, have well-established international reputations. You might or might not be able to accuse the galleries showing these artists of cheating; but by the same token, they are extending the argument that American art is part of the international discourse, and should not be excluded simply because of the artist’s nationality. The Biennial has not by any stretch become a survey of home-brewed new talent; the new faces are imports all. The other trend that might seem to compromise the goals of the Biennial is the diminution of the initial pattern of cooperation the Biennial established between foreign and local galleries. More and more Biennial participants have opted to work directly with foreign artists rather than with foreign galleries. This, admittedly, changes an original aspect of the Biennial, and why this change has come about cannot easily be guessed. It is a shame that fewer and fewer of the world’s lively galleries have the opportunity to strut their stuff on the L.A. stage. But the resulting exhibitions are no less substantial and stimulating than they have been in past years. It would be nice if the Biennial were to remain a multifarious model of hands-across-the-sea cooperation; but if it still serves to bring foreign art to domestic eyes, the Biennial is still doing its most important job. The International Biennial is not a mega-exhibit of the likes of most other soi-disant biennials. It is not a curated and/or governmental cross-section of worldwide contemporary art practice, but a random sampling of such practice determined by the vagaries of participating galleries’ programs and participating artists’ availability. And the Biennial is the very opposite of an art fair. It is not several dozen – hundred – galleries showing their wares under one roof (and under physically constrained circumstances). It is several dozen – hundred – artists showing their art under one sky, and under one rubric, in circumstances presumed optimal for viewing art (track lighting, sturdy walls, professional ambience, etc.). This Biennial is a far less orderly affair, conceptually, than either aforementioned exhibition structure (although if you know anything about the typical organization of mega-shows and art fairs alike, you could readily surmise that L.A.’s Biennial’s is far from the most anarchic). What the Biennial is – and shouldn’t one end in the affirmative? – is a chance for Los Angeles to meet international art on a formal basis, to see art from all over the world as art from all over the world, not just art. It’s not just art, after all, it’s art from everywhere – or at least from everyone – else. It’s special that way.