Admirable Weirdness: Sky High Farm Biennial 2025 in Germantown
The peculiar feeling of this exhibition is heightened by the vibe of the historic storage building that hosts it.
My first visit to the Sky High Farm Biennial 2025 “Trees Never End and Houses Never End” was a madcap dash during Upstate Art Weekend (my recap of UAW). A month later I found myself itching to return to get another dose of the weirdness of this show, and I employ the word “weirdness” with admiration.
Art is endlessly weird and the biennial—featuring diverse artworks by over 50 international artists as curated by artist and Sky High Farm founder Dan Colen—reflects it well.
The peculiar feeling of this exhibition is heightened by the vibe of the historic building that hosts it (a former cold storage warehouse for apples), the labyrinth of industrial water containers that create the gallery spaces on the first floor (a sculptural feat unto itself), and the mirrored ground on the second floor (spoiler alert: vertigo ahoy), an altogether funky experience. The oversized exhibition folio that includes a detailed map to navigate the layout indicates the biennial “demonstrates what’s possible when art, agriculture, and activism function as one,” a curatorial integrity that infuses this biennial with power.
Wildness, Reverence, Release
The show begins with a stunning installation in the Annex, featuring prints by artist and teacher Ben Wigfall (1930-2017) and weavings by his wife Mary. This section also includes recorded audiographies of Wigfall speaking with his father as his father describes the generational trauma of slavery for Black Americans at the turn of the century. The soft flow of their voices is a chilling soundtrack that accompanies the 25 African masks from Wigfall’s private collection that command the room as curated by LA-based artist Lauren Halsey, each one standing stoically amid the others in their tribute to Wigfall.
Anne Imhof’s installation of water tanks at the Sky High Farm Biennial.
The first floor is a cornucopia of aesthetic delights, including homoerotic photographs by Mark Armijo McKnight and Black Fly with Bodies (2021) is a sultry vision among them. Stephen Lichty’s Untitled (2014) sculpture is a bit unsettling—a dead cat hanging atop a high stone. Wet Blaze (2013) by Ryan McGinley is an image of soaked revelers raging around a roaring fire, a welcomed flash of wildness. I am unabashed about my fangirl-love for Tschabalala Self, and her patchwork painting To Seek (2025) of a woman leaning forward from a scarlet backdrop with oversized eyes surrounding her is pure jouissance. Bobbi Salvor Menuez’s Impression (2025) is a lovely piece, itself a humble bed of grass with the trace of a body in the thicket. When my eyes landed on Anne Collier’s Woman Crying (Comic) #24 (2020), my entire art-school-schooling embraced the encounter. Just around the corner is Carroll Dunham’s Untitled (2007), a quintessential early work on paper looking the part. Take a moment to watch all of Michael Sailstorfer’s 3 Ster mit Ausblick (2002), a short video that witnesses the dismantling of a small country cabin with nothing left but the fire in the stove, both hilarious and poetic.
Reflections and Reveries
The second floor is an expansive installation with a reprise of Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled (2004), a 12,000-square-foot mirrored Plexiglas floor that serves as one large reflective surface for all the other artworks (and audio pieces) in the space. The effect is both exhilarating and disorienting and heightens the encounter with works such as Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard (1972-73) by The Harrisons, featuring real trees sprouting from wooden bases. A series of neon sculptures throne/first and last and always (2023) by Banks Violette anchor the room as their hypnotic glow is doubled by the illuminated floor, and Ann Craven’s Band (Cushing Stripe 1-22) (2013) mural-like installation of candy-colored stripes across two walls will pull eyes to the far-right corner.
Installation view of African masks from the collection of Ben Wigfall.
Wandering around, we encounter amusing works such as Rirkrit Tiravanija’s untitled 2025 (one million rabbit holes) (2025), a ping-pong table with large holes that make it impossible to play, Pia Camil’s Nature is not a Machine (2025), a large tree branch laden with plastic soda bottles, and Sean Desiree’s SunPunks #2 (2024), a fun-loving yellow sculpture near the window looking out on to the Hudson River. The final pieces to catch my attention were In Season/A Reason/Let Me Down (2025) by Grace Rosario Perkins, a strong abstract expressionist painting of pure release, and Lot (2023) by Marcus Leslie Singleton, featuring figures in dreamy environs, including a blue human and black angels, all of them interacting gracefully in a shaman-like ritual.
A Fitting Tribute
The title for this show is written on an unassuming white cut-out figure (by an anonymous artist) in honor of the late Joey Piecuch, the first staff member at Sky High Farm (there is a sweet story about Piecuch on the back of the exhibition folio). It leans against the wall on the second floor and restates the kind sentiment behind “Trees Never End and Houses Never End,” a motto used by Piecuch to describe the woods he played in as a child. Piecuch is gone, and the show will be gone soon, too (closing to the public on September 20), a reminder to cherish the never-ending of art in all its wonderful weirdness.
