The young and the restless - art, various artists, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

"Wild Walls"? Maybe "Wild Rooms." Each of 14 spirited artists filled an individual, enclosed space, but most ignored the walls for the exhibition "Wild Walls" at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. As the curators explain in the catalog, "wild walls" are "movable walls on a film set, walls that can change an interior into an exterior when filmed from a different angle." Stretching the analogy, they elaborate: "A similar changeability in meaning characterizes the artworks in this exhibition." Walls or no walls, it was an edgy and vibrant show in which eclectic strategies tested meaning, and sometimes the meaning of meaning.

As one of several events celebrating the Stedelijk's 100th anniversary, "Wild Walls" showed the work of young contemporaries chosen by the museum's two youngest curators, Leontine Coelewij and Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen. Although their choices ranged widely in medium, subject and tone, most employed camera-based technologies, including video, while installation and collage methods pervaded the work.

In the catalog, the curators reveal almost nothing about their selection procedures, although they propose a generational sensibility based on their choices. The artists they chose are mostly within a few years of 30. Just as the exhibitors were fairly close in age, they also emerged from a relatively restricted geographical area. Five came from the United Kingdom, three from the Netherlands, and the others from nearby European nations: Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. One artist was from the United States.

If the age cohesion derived from the premise of the show, it is hard to know what, if anything, the geographical limitations mean. Although the artists share aesthetic patrimony and artistic goals, even at this early stage in their careers they look beyond their own national borders: all have exhibited internationally, most have had some exposure in the U.S. and half have exhibited in New York City.

As to the sensibility of these artists, "The current generation is primarily interested in the alleged realism of the media image," the curators assert. Wasn't that the preceding generation? These artists differ substantially from those who have previously celebrated media or subjected it to critical analysis: "The present generation ... is distinguished by a more personal and relaxed attitude toward media culture," state the curators. Although a number of these artists employ now-established conceptual strategies of deconstruction, for the most part they do not seem to be embracing the "messages" of deconstruction so much as exploring the psyche. Whereas most demonstrate a disdain for formal organization and traditional techniques, several display expertise with various video technologies.

The most memorable aspects of the exhibition were its four video installations. Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist's dramatic installation, a captivating meditation on love, loss, nature and popular culture involved projections on three walls of a large, darkened gallery. On the right wall, an oblique projection of endless waves provided a contextual backdrop for the main event taking place on the forward and left walls. There, mirror-image projections on an enormous scale met at the corner, giving the impression - as a kaleidoscope does - that symmetrical forms developed out of or receded into the corner. Nearly all of the long sequence was filmed underwater in brilliant color. Although the visual subject matter was not logically structured, the audio component brought thematic coherence to its apparent discontinuity. A female voice (presumably the artist) sings plaintively about love and its travails, exposing longing, vulnerability and anger. Meanwhile the viewer is treated to images of coral reefs and colorful fish, sunny bands of light shimmering across a sandy sea bottom, swimmers, full lips kissing the camera and bodies and parts of bodies floating into view and disappearing. Many of these merge in and out of the corner of the room, providing a vivid metaphor of the physical and psychological union and separation that accompanies romantic love. From time to time, banal or even kitschy objects - a toy truck, a teacup, a garish souvenir heart - descend, drifting through the blissfully indulgent liquid, wryly reminding viewers of the artificiality of society's construct of nature and perhaps suggesting that commercial culture conditions even our experience of falling in love. The sheer beauty of what passes before the viewer, the tone of languorous narcissism tempered by humor, and the masterful pacing of visual and auditory experience give this piece an emotional power and complexity unmatched anywhere else in the exhibition.

Comparable in meditative intent, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon's video installation provided a more spare experience. In a darkened room with bright red walls, a single large screen was filled with the image of a drifting rowboat on a quiet sea. As the vessel bobs, the surface of the water ripples past. Because the video is slowed, however, these minimal incidents take on a slightly jerky quality that abstracts the image from the commonplace. Playing on the romantic symbol of the empty boat, which can suggest a failed journey, the installation provided a moment of calm in an exhibition not otherwise notable for sensory deprivation.

At an extreme, in yet another large, darkened room, English artist Georgina Starr recreated the atmosphere of a sleazy nightclub, the "Hungry Brain," in which viewers were invited to sit at small, circular tables. Many of these held the detritus of an evening's entertainment - dirty glasses and objects relating to mental phenomena, such as magic-trick equipment or books about psychology and philosophy. In a humorous touch, each table sported a paper sign warning, "Sorry, no packed lunches." In the front of the room a video screen showed amateurish nightclub acts interspersed with pointless conversations between members of an audience seated at the same tables at which the viewers sat. Thus, reality and artifice literally shift places.

Reality is also under duress in an entertaining short video by the British twins Jane and Louise Wilson. Although the video has the feel of a creepy narrative, it has no discernible plot. In the video, floorboards creek, long shadows are cast, and an enigmatic, transparent sphere whisks a figure through an otherwise believable set. Shots filmed underwater are run backward causing air bubbles to rush into an actor's nose and mouth.

Related to the video work, a photo-installation by yet another British artist, Mat Collishaw, more or less filled three walls of a small room with projected slides featuring glamorous women. Although artfully done, this work didn't have much to say beyond underscoring the artist's "relaxed attitude toward media culture." Two other artists, Lara Schnitger and Gary Hume, included video components in their contributions, but in each case, the video running on a TV monitor seemed incidental to the rest of their material.

The work by Amsterdam-based Schnitger was sculpture cum installation. A large, soft object with many tubular "legs" hung from the ceiling, nearly filling the room. Its diffuseness as an object paralleled other installations' open-endedness, exemplified at its most extreme in two by the Viennese ManfreDu Schu and the Belgian Anne Decock. Their rooms, filled with seemingly unrelated objects, referred to contemporary debates about the nature and origin of meaning. Although the catalog claims that both "develop a very personal discourse that runs parallel to their visual work," even with catalog in hand the viewer did not have enough information to decode the work within such discourses.

Other installations were less remote. The maze constructed by German artist Kai Althoff offered no easily discernible intent, but was engaging. Narrow passageways leading to a number of dead ends were strewn with photographs, drawings and objects that provided surprises and hints at larger meanings.

Aernout Mik's installation was more explicit in its social commentary. In a decrepit setting, slightly scaled-down replicas of museum-guard uniforms were arrayed to suggest worn out, half-collapsed bodies. This Dutch artist views the museum's actual guards, on duty in the room, as essential components of his work, drawing attention to what is normally left unconsidered in the museum experience.

The most visually appealing installation was created by the Austrian collective Multiple Autorenschaft Lienz, led by another set of twins, Irene and Christine Hohenbuchler, who work with about 15 mentally handicapped persons in a communal setting. The installation consisted of a large tangle of braided ropes suspended from the ceiling and looped over wires. To these were affixed various miniature art objects, presumably created by the individual members of the community, some childishly naive, others more complex. The effect was decorative and cheerful, optimistic in its affirmation of the healing power of art.

Only three artists, including Hume, produced two-dimensional art meant to be hung on the wall. Dutch artist Benoit Hermans exhibited about a dozen collages in which photographic elements are central. By combining mechanically reproduced images of the past and present along with collaged and painted elements, he presents conundrums about commonly-held notions of perception and meaning. London-based artist Hume works on the borderline between abstraction and illusion in large, handsome paintings with shiny, hard, industrial surfaces.

The lone American, John Currin, was odd man out in other ways. Although there is no shortage of interest in video and installation art in the U.S., he was the only artist to employ a traditional medium and style, working figuratively in oil on canvas. His purpose, however, is not to extend but to discredit the tradition into which he inserts himself. Since leaving graduate school at Yale University nearly 10 years ago, his caricatural "bad" paintings of doe-eyed human stereotypes have attracted attention in New York and elsewhere. Accepting ugliness as Currin's "predominant theme," the catalog describes his work as "a perversion of the media's idealized images" - his crude and cruel renderings are meant to appear both shallow and derivative. His cynicism about the meaning and value of art and life ran deeper than was apparent in any other work.

The harshness of Currin's work in this context may underscore the fact that this was a European exhibition, inscribed with a European sensibility. Although the artists included in "Wild Walls" represented work created within constructs similar to their American counterparts, they may be less doctrinaire and judgmental. Perhaps they are more relaxed not only in their attitude toward media culture but also in their view of the human experience.

ANN LEE MORGAN is an art critic and editor living in Princeton, NJ.

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