TO MARCH 5

Much has been made about the fact that “Media/Metaphor”—the Corcoran’s 46th biennial exhibition—is the first to incorporate photography, video, and new media. But, as in any experiment, some efforts prove more successful than others. The 15-artist show—housed in impressively transformed, starkly lit spaces—opens strikingly, with Loop (pictured), a 360-degree sound-and-light installation by Jennifer Steinkamp and Jimmy Johnson that brings to mind the memorable, neon-lit moving walkway that shuttles passengers between terminals at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Unlike Loop, which can be enjoyed on its own terms, many of the other video installations—including those by Gary Hill, Y. David Chung, Michal Rovner, Shimon Attie, and Victor Burgin—offer conceptual sparks but fall short of overall brilliance. In a more traditional vein, Nan Goldin’s photographs—with their explicit sexuality—continue to shock, but the biennial’s standouts are Ben Sakoguchi and Chuck Close. Sakoguchi’s series of postcard-style paintings of Japanese-American internment camps finds the perfect blend of art and kitsch, style and substance, irony and outrage. Close, best known for his large-scale photorealistic portraits, offers a series of new daguerreotypes—modeled after the mirrored images that essentially gave birth to photography in the 1830s. His subject matter—disembodied nude torsos and portraits of his artist friends—is less impressive than his fresh reinvention of a marvelous, not to mention long-dead, technique. So much for new media. “Media/Metaphor” is on view from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday-Sunday, and from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, to Monday, March 5, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW. $5. (202) 639-1700. (Louis Jacobson)