Biennial artists announced

The Whitney Museum of American Art has just released its list of artists participating in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Curated by the Walker’s Philippe Vergne and the Whitney’s Chrissie Iles, the exhibition’s title, Day for Night, is derived from Francois Truffaut’s La Nuit américaine, a 1973 film that featured nighttime scenes shot during the day using special filters. (It also shares a name with a 2005 painting by Peter Doig, above.)

Of the first-ever titled Biennial, Iles says the exhibition “explores the artifice of American culture in what could be described as a pre-Enlightenment moment, in which culture is preoccupied with the irrational, the religious, the dark, the erotic, and the violent, filtered through a sense of flawed beauty. This reflective, restless mood is not unique to the United States; its presence across both America and Europe suggests a shift in the accepted values that have formed the basis of 20 th-century Western culture.”

Details and the artist list here. Also: Carol Vogel’s “This Whitney Biennial Will Take In the World” in the New York Times.