A towering clay sculpture by Gabriel Chaile is a celebration of the still-living vitality of precolonial Indigenous cultures of his native country of Argentina. And the show supplies a range of visual matches for it.ĭaignault is one of several artists who use art to chip away at historical lies and silences.

That piece of pop wisdom - the notion that persistent pressure eventually wears down resistance and creates change - is, of course, a staple of many cultures. The exhibition’s theme is adapted from a Brazilian proverb “Soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole” (“Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura”). Nor, for that matter, does any other single “look.” Yet, despite being a grab bag of forms and styles, the 2021 Triennial is that rare thing, a big contemporary survey - it fills three floors of the museum, plus its lobby - with a cohesive texture and mood. The eye-candy suavity found in the heavily marketed current wave of figure painting seen a lot in galleries finds no place here. Political vibes are buzzing everywhere, but are rarely instantly readable as such. Scale is generally small, and of the few monumental pieces, most are sculptures or installations in break-downable formats.Ĭertain themes recur: impermanence, erosion, disease, survival. And it has, overall, a hoarded, shut-in feel. Much of the work by 40 international artists and collectives was made during the past two pandemic-strapped years. The New Museum’s fifth Triennial exhibition, titled “Soft Water Hard Stone,” is largely a product of lockdown.

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