The United States is in a sad state of affairs. That wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads or watches the news, or even just scrolls social media and skims the headlines. But you would also know it if you happened to walk by the US Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, where the American representative this year, Alma Allen, has installed five extremely unremarkable sculptures in front of the building, along with some 20 works inside.

It’s a sharp turn from how the US Pavilion has looked the last couple of times around. The previous two artists to take over the pavilion, Simone Leigh (2022) and Jeffrey Gibson (2024), sought to radically transform the Palladian structure in the center of the Giardini, built in 1930. Despite their drastically different approaches, both artists sought to surface the history of colonialism and empire at the core of the United States’ founding and present.

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That isn’t the case in 2026. As the US and international press have reported ad nauseam, the second Trump administration’s call for proposals for the Venice Biennale said the American presentation should “reflect and promote American values” and foster “peaceful relations between the United States and other nations.”

So how does that bear out in Allen’s US Pavilion? Those looking for work that is explicitly pro-Trump won’t find it here. But those looking for the most incisive art being produced in the US at the moment won’t find that here either. What they will find is largely what Allen has shown for the past decade: works in bronze, wood, and various types of metamorphic rock, including Mexican marble and Guatemalan green quartzite.

The majority of these works carry the title Not Yet Titled, a signature of Allen’s that allows for open-ended interpretations in which viewers can impose whatever meaning they like. During my visit, I asked whether there was any introductory wall text, only to be told, in keeping with Allen’s spirit, that I would find it in the final room of the exhibition as a way to privilege looking.

Allen has often eschewed speaking about his work at length, an orientation that he acknowledged to ARTnews recently has had unintended effects. “I do see that I have maybe made a mistake in never engaging in that part of it because it’s left open that the work is a certain kind of thing that’s easy to do,” he said. “It lets other people define what my work is.”

Allen’s exhibitions have often been accompanied by press releases that do heavy interpretive lifting, postulating formal qualities that don’t always match what’s on view. The release for his 2020 Kasmin exhibition—Kasmin’s successor gallery, Olney Gleason, dropped him ahead of the Biennale—states that his materials “emit a mysterious and ineffable lifeforce,” such that “bronze sculptures appear impossibly malleable, even liquid; wood grain patterns are accented to highlight their material history, and stones … vibrate with a sense of mysticism.” Meanwhile, the release for his 2024 show, also at Kasmin, states that his latest sculptures, some of which are on view in the US Pavilion, show his “ongoing experimentation into the ability of matter to embody contemplations on free will, consciousness, and the nature of time.”

Artists defying what their chosen materials can do—or even leaving a work untitled—is nothing new. These formal approaches are at the core of the history of modernism and continue to animate the practices of countless contemporary artists. The goal, then, of a successful work, in this critic’s opinion, is to offer something new to that discourse. That is where Allen’s work often falls short.

The most aesthetically pleasing of Allen’s sculptures are those that use different stones, but that is simply because the stone itself is already beautiful. It would look just as good as a countertop or bench. Allen relies on these materials to carry meaning for him as an artist, but the works simply don’t have much to say. They come off as decorative objects that a certain kind of interior designer might choose to add as a pop of color to an airy entry way in a McMansion. As I walked through the pavilion, I couldn’t help but think of Martin Puryear, the US representative in 2019, during the first Trump administration. Puryear is also a sculptor whose dedication to craft, materials, and formal innovation is intimately felt in the beguiling sculptures he makes, which he often imbues with aspects of US history. With an example like Puryear, it’s clear that abstract sculpture can posit new meaning and new ways of seeing for the viewer.

The art on view isn’t the worst art I’ve ever seen. But this, after all, is the Venice Biennale, where the very best is supposed to be on view. The bar shouldn’t be in hell, even if the country is. I’ve often heard, in the most neoliberal of circles, the refrain, when protesters advocating for change are criticized: What do they want? No museum at all? In this case, it would be an empty pavilion. I think that would be preferable to an artist who is comfortable enough to say his art is apolitical while cozying up to a right-wing authoritarian government that seeks to bend the world to its will.

Shortly after I asked about the wall text, Allen’s partner, Su Wu, came up to me and asked whether I’d like a walkthrough. Curious, I agreed. She began by detailing Allen’s biography as a way of giving context to the show, which, given the artist’s long-standing decision not to speak much about his work, I found surprising. Artists who aim to be as enigmatic as Allen often refrain from discussing their biographies, since doing so might impose an unwanted reading on the work.

From what I jotted down, here’s what Wu told me: He’s the first entirely self-taught artist to be commissioned for the US Pavilion. He didn’t finish high school, which, Wu said, represents 5 percent of Americans; he never attended college, which represents 40 percent of Americans. There was something hauntingly Trumpian about the way these statistics were deployed to insist on the pavilion’s “first”-ness and on Allen’s representativeness of the US citizenry. That’s not to say the pavilion should only go to an artist with an MFA from one of the country’s top art schools. There are countless self-taught US artists whose work, often only recently recognized by the mainstream art world, has opened up new ways of seeing or offered windows into their inner worlds.

As Wu walked me through the exhibition, she offered various interpretations of how the works might be read. Two of the outdoor bronzes might be seen as drawn weapons. Some are sea creatures, while others represent a ruin. Another could be an inflatable bag. Perhaps Not Yet Titled (2016), made in Persian travertine, is the clearest illustration of my gripe with Allen’s art. Wu said it could be seen as a mushroom cloud or even a gesture. To my eye, it looks not unlike a rock formation in Utah, Allen’s home state. Sure, it was crafted this way, and multiple readings can be gleaned from it, but what else does it actually say?

The exhibition ends with the wall text, though if you entered through this door, it would actually be the first thing you saw. In it, curator Jeffrey Uslip provides a statement not unlike the press releases from Allen’s earlier gallery shows. It reads: “Alma Allen’s biomorphic sculptures evoke the visceral realities of contemporary life and reveal the fragility and resilience of the human condition. The expansive environments and landscapes in which Allen has lived and worked have shaped his points of view, developed his sculptural vocabulary, and informed how he moves through the world.”

Below that is an artist statement in which Wu briefly interviews Allen, asking him, “What is it?” To which Allen responds that the work “is as stubborn as I am, I cannot tell you.” He adds later, “Here is cancellation deployed as a physical act and in moral justification, and here is a repair. There are those who watch you and those who refuse to see you.” That passage is almost certainly a way to head off negative reviews of the pavilion, as well as a response to the controversy surrounding Allen’s selection, including the pavilion’s commissioner, the American Arts Conservancy, a year-old nonprofit headed by someone with no museum experience. (The wall text also includes a list of financial supporters of the US Pavilion, including John Phelan, a major art collector and the recently fired Navy secretary, and his wife, Amy; Richard R. Rogers, the recently deceased cofounder of Mary Kay; and Carlos Rivera, the founder of Artrank, an AI-powered software company that tells subscribers whether they should buy, sell, or liquidate a work of art.)

On Tuesday morning, I overheard Uslip defending the selection process, citing the selection of Ed Ruscha in 2005 by a consortium of museum directors. There is more than one way—via a proposal from an accredited museum—for an artist to be selected for the US Pavilion, he said. But it’s worth mentioning that Ruscha’s 2005 pavilion was titled “Course of Empire” and came two years after the Bush administration invaded Iraq. In Artforum, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh observed at the time, “Ruscha has clearly also tabulated the tasks of an artist representing his country’s culture at a moment of the incessant deterioration of its liberal-democratic public sphere.”

The deterioration of this country has only accelerated in the past 18 months, since Trump’s reelection as president. An artist willing to take on the Biennale, as Ruscha once did and as countless others have done in the US Pavilion and other national pavilions, would examine the nation’s condition and offer commentary—any commentary at all—on it. To be apolitical or neutral, especially at an event organized by national pavilions and in which countries can officially participate only if they are recognized by Italy, is a political statement after all—even if you don’t want it to be.

Most people with access to the Biennale on the Tuesday preview day didn’t seem interested in Allen’s pavilion. The talk around Venice that day was just how empty the US Pavilion was. Given the prominent role the US plays in contemporary art and the pavilion’s central place within the Giardini, it is often among the most-visited national pavilions in a given year. During my visit, people came and went—not in throngs, but in ones and twos, dipping in and out quickly. They seemed to come out of sheer curiosity, but found nothing that made them stay. An attendant posted near the entrance had a clicker to count visitors. I’d be interested to see how those numbers, if they are reported accurately, compare with those of past US pavilions.