Bruce Nauman. Eat/Death, 1972; neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension frame; 7 3/8 x 25¼ x 2 1/8 in (18.7 x 64.1 x 5.3 cm). Courtesy of the Artist and la Biennale di Venezia. Photo taken by the author.

The biggest shock in this Biennale is that painting looks out of sorts. It’s not obvious at first, but it becomes evident after combing through the vast offerings. In part, this is due to painting’s long and continuing history of being the poster child for the powerful, a precedent that feels at odds with the show’s filters; but this goes deeper than that. The brutal truth is simply that painting is always first about being a painting. A painting about class struggle isn’t just about class struggle, it’s a painting about class struggle—a bit like listening to someone letting you know how smart they are while explaining the subtleties of Marx’s Various Formulæ for the Rate of Surplus-Value—by design, painting is selfish that way. The content of a painting is always subordinate to the medium, otherwise a different material would have been chosen. But what this surprisingly suggests is that there isn’t much room for painting in thematically curated shows, that is, unless those shows are about painting.

The Romanian Pavilion triggered this sweeping observation. Its installation of paintings by Adrian Ghenie called Darwin’s Room (2015) is sorely out of place in this pavilion, in stark contrast from its critically received previous offering of An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale (2013), where Manuel Pelmuș and Alexandra Pirici offered performances that encapsulated the entire history of the Biennale within a single day. Ghenie’s are not bad paintings, but there is no way that they can be properly considered. They immediately feel too self-absorbed in being painterly, too alien for the larger topic at hand. Technically, parts of the installation probably tie into the Garden of Disorder filter, but the work with Ghenie’s reoccurring theme of self-portraiture as historical figures withers in the dominate shadow of painterliness.

Marlene Dumas. Skulls, 2013-15; installation view, 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice. Courtesy of the Artist and la Biennale di Venezia. Photo taken by the author.

After the Romanian rub, I came to see everything else at the Biennale conventionally classified as a painting in the same light. Chris Ofili was an obvious choice for this curatorial effort, and under different circumstances his work would have been electrifying. But separate the historical context of the artist from the work, and it becomes harder to decipher the content from the decorative. To say that it took almost a full second to dismiss Georg Baselitz’s paintings would be generous; and Marlene Dumas’ brilliantly fun skull paintings could have single-handedly reversed the plight of painting for the entire exhibition, but by that point, it was too late. It read more of an epitaph for the medium of painting itself than a plausible warning on global excess. It’s demanding enough to take time to consider a work of art; placing a painting into a situation where it’s forced to supersede its primary function would appear to be asking too much.

Chris Ofili. Installation view, the Corderie building, 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice. Courtesy of the Artist and la Biennale di Venezia. Photo taken by the author.

For the most part, this Biennale has been overwhelmingly well received. Nevertheless, there are some that find the critiquing filters too rich for their tastes. Evidently, the show is too Marxist–which is to say that any possibility of a Marxist critique is too Marxist. So it isn’t surprising that these guardians of capitalism have found refuge in the very thing that is at odds with the exhibition. As if it wasn’t tough enough for painting, it also has to deal with an enabler reinforcing its quandary.

BGL. Canadassimo, 2015 (detail); mixed media; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artists, The National Gallery of Canada, and la Biennale di Venezia. Photo taken by the author.

To be clear, there were also plenty of non-painting works that lacked the ability to rise to the occasion, but when they failed, they did so independent of their respective medium. In the context of this exhibition, painting’s failure is a double jeopardy; its content offers a critique while simultaneously being a manifestation of the subject of that same critique. Either the content of a piece is undermined, or else the viewer is left with a lot of painterly naval gazing. (The Canadian Pavilion offered the only feasibly resolution of this point with BGL’s Canadassimo, 2015, but then it left painting deconstructed as sculptural remnants manifested from an accumulation of every Pollockian gesture ever made). Hence, viewers of this Biennale will have to decide if they can get past the paradox of critical painting’s self-defeating precondition or write it off as collateral damage of the greater critique.

All the World’s Futures is on view at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia through November 22, 2015.

This article is made possible by our Writers Fund, thanks to readers like you. Help us keep it going!

Chris Ofili. The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (Third Version), 1998; oil, acrylic, polyester resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins, and elephant dung on linen; 96 x 72 in. Courtesy of the Artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Victoria Miro, London.

One of the artist’s strategies for striking a balance between content and form is to enforce constraints upon his process. Afromuses, a series of over 100 small watercolor portraits of imaginary black individuals, provides one example. From afar, these same-size works on paper look almost identical, rendering the same criteria: the hair, face, neck, and chest of a figure seen frontally or in profile. Within these parameters, however, is tremendous experimentation with color, pattern, and technique. These are quick studies, each done in fifteen to twenty minutes, but they reveal the freedom, improvisation, and inspiration Ofili finds within his self-imposed restrictions.

Chris Ofili. Untitled (Afromuse), 1995–2005; watercolor and pencil on paper; 9 ⅗ x 6 ⅕ in. Courtesy of the Artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Victoria Miro, London.

Similarly, the infamous elephant-dung paintings exemplify the challenges the artist promotes in his process. In a recent talk with the museum’s curator, Massimiliano Gioni, Ofili described his choice to experiment with dung in his work as a contradiction that felt strange but useful.^[1] The dung, which the artist first collected while on a residency in Zimbabwe, makes reference to Africa as both context and myth. Its material nature is so distracting, though, that the potential for beauty is nearly destroyed. Ofili’s self-constraint in this case is essentially ruining the painting from the get-go, to test his skills with composition, pattern, decoration, and intensive detail—to not just counterbalance but also overcome the shit. And overcome it he does.

All of the paintings rest on dung balls, each decorated with letters that spell the title of the piece. This presentation elevates each painting off the floor and allows the canvas to lean against the wall. The works not only feel more three-dimensional but also boast their opulent surface ornamentation. Rodin…The Thinker is loaded with ornate, swirling organic patterns covering the central figure and background. Ofili reinvents the famous sculpture’s pose by making the painting’s subject a black woman with orange hair, clad in an orange thong, thigh-high stockings, and garter belts. While the work does reiterate a trope of the sexualized black female body, it does so while recasting an icon of the white male philosopher/poet.

Chris Ofili. Afronirvana, 2002; oil, acrylic, polyester resin, aluminum foil, glitter, map pins, and elephant dung on canvas; 108 x 144 in. Courtesy of the Artist; David Zwirner, New York/London; and Victoria Miro, London.

Many of Ofili’s paintings contain this heady ambivalence, simultaneously playing with allusions to both marginalizing stereotypes and empowered figures. Several of the dung paintings depict a superhero of Ofili’s invention named Captain Shit, an amalgam recalling figures like Shaft and Superfly from blaxploitation films and Luke Cage, one of Marvel Comics’ first African American superheroes. The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (Third Version) shows Captain Shit performing before an adoring crowd. Black and white hands are raised in excitement before him, and large black stars in the background contain collaged cutouts of eyes gazing upon him. The Captain Shit paintings suggest the fervor and self-consciousness of celebrity culture but more specifically the multivalent experience of being a black figure in the public eye. The subtext of these works is an exploration of a contemporary minstrelsy and the mixed blessing of having talents that propel one to prestige and prominence, with the caveat that a large portion of the audience may uncritically consume, fetishize, or parody one’s identity.

Another series shares the lavish and intricate techniques of the first set of dung paintings but applies a new constraint: a limited color palette. Created for the 2003 Venice Biennale, when Ofili represented Great Britain, these five paintings are executed in black, red, and green, the colors of Marcus Garvey’s pan-African flag. Afronirvana portrays reclining figures amid a tropical landscape. Lush leaves frame the figures, and hanging above the center like a North Star is a dung ball adorned with a red, green, and black pattern. The figures are akin to the Afromuses: at once anonymous and specific, mythically regal, yet unpretentious.

Chris Ofili. Night and Day; installation view at the New Museum, 2014.

The third floor features nine paintings in a dimly lit, carpeted gallery, with a constricted palette of deep indigoes, blacks, silvers, and purples. The limited range of tones veers to the point of invisibility. From oblique angles, one begins to discern the dark scenes, some nightmarish: a body hung from a tree, police circling a figure on the ground. These works present a troubling rumination on race and visibility, forcing viewers to reconcile themselves to what their imaginations kick up in the struggle to decipher each image. Here, Ofili throws away all the intoxicating stylistic charms that brought him notoriety, yet these works still reference a chromatic spectrum and preoccupation with beauty that has rippled through much of Western art history, from Renaissance frescoes to Picasso.

On the final floor of the exhibition, the artist painted a floor-to-ceiling backdrop of lush, watery, pink and purple tropical wildlife, inspired by the 1947 film Black Narcissus. Amid this expanse are nine paintings, all loaded with rowdy color and form, like players in an immersive set. There is no concern or allegiance here to contemporary trends or dialogues surrounding painting; these compositions are throwbacks to Matisse, Gauguin, and color-field painters, all sampled with nerve and control. This may be Ofili’s best trait: his receptivity to influence—be it from the art-historical canon, hip-hop, pop culture, cult films, or Romanticism—all while maintaining a focused and nuanced exploration of black life and representation.

Chris Ofili: Night and Day is on view at the New Museum through January 25, 2015.

^[1] New Museum, “Chris Ofili and Massimiliano Gioni in Conversation,” embedded video, “Chris Ofili: Night and Day,” http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/chris-ofili.