Walking through this year’s Whitney Biennial can feel like entering the set of a high-budget horror film. A hooded figure stands alone, wrapped in a sleeping bag, surrounded by empty bullet cases. Out on the terrace, a field of plastic palm-trees shimmers in the breeze, while an oversized bronze man munches desolately on a burger. Screens act as portals to other worlds: a rubber extraction plant in the Amazon rainforest, an idyllic island housing a cemetery operated by prisoners. Explosions proliferate, and zombies prowl.

Since its inception in 1932, the Biennial has taken the temperature of contemporary American art, and investigated how it’s responding to the concerns of the present moment. There’s no real British equivalent: in the cultural calendar, it’s of similar stature to the Turner Prize, but it features not a handful of nominees but (in this case) 63 artists and collectives, working across a full range of media, and not in competition but in dialogue. 

Curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards began planning this edition – the Biennial’s 80th – in 2019. Its conception has evolved over three tumultuous years encompassing the Covid pandemic, vocal demands for racial justice and environmental action, and a fractious presidential election. The result is a dynamic, discomforting exhibition, which rises admirably to the challenge of its circumstances; its vision of American art and identity is expansive and searching, but thoughtful juxtapositions and surprising resonances between works prevent it from ever becoming incoherent. 

The exhibition is organised across two floors, each with a distinctive feel. The first is a dark labyrinth: in a series of small, dimly-lit rooms, black carpets muffle the sounds emanating from a cluster of powerful video works and black-and-white abstract pieces. Denyse Thomasos’s intensely crosshatched lines evoke prisons, slave ships and burial sites, while Adam Pendleton’s monumental paintings display the process of their making, deep layers of drips and lines accruing and vanishing over the course of time.

Several pieces on this floor make reference to recent political protests; among the most dramatic is Alfredo Jaar’s installation 06.01.2020 18.39 (2022), which displays video footage of anti-racism protests in Washington DC, while large overhead fans engulf viewers in gusts of cold air recalling the windstorm on-screen, as the police helicopters fly so close to the ground that branches break from trees and mingle with the rubber bullets and tear gas being sprayed at protesters.