The Whitney Biennial’s Taste for Flesh

But, in other ways, a label-less Biennial might be clearer. The introductory text, by the co-curators Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, stresses the point that “Artificial Intelligence is complicating our understanding of what is real.” One of the first art works you see on the sixth floor is, sure enough, an A.I.-generated print, courtesy of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, so it’s a letdown to continue through the galleries and find approximately zero other pieces dealing with artificial intelligence. A show purged of wall text wouldn’t tease you like that, at least. You would also have an easier time recognizing how many of these works depend on text not just for background but for aesthetics: whatever beauty or humor they’ve got comes from nearby words, as the glow of the moon comes from the glare of the sun.