In Santa Fe: A Biennale With A Coherent Message

Biennales are generally big agglomerations of a lot of “stuff” that rarely works together to deliver a coherent statement. But “last weekend, in a minor miracle of contemporary curating, New Yorker Robert Storr opened the fifth Santa Fe biennial, titled Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque. Storr’s show, held at a contemporary art center called Site Santa Fe, channels the unnatural elegance of Raphael’s Vatican decor, almost 500 years after the Italian master’s death. At Site’s invitation, Storr has brought together 53 contemporary artists whose works speak to one another, and to how the ancient notion of the grotesque pans out today.”