Larry Bell and Raúl de NievesThe laminated glass boxes of minimalist master Larry Bell’s Pacific Red II hold court on one of the Whitney’s outdoor terraces, presiding over lower Manhattan, while Mexico-born Raúl de Nieves’s stained-acetate windows and accompanying yarn sculptures occupy the fifth-floor’s entire eastern gallery, throwing worlds like “Peace” and “Justice” onto the ground in saturated shadows. These are likely to be the two most Instagrammed works of the Biennial, and it so happens that they speak to each other in ruby-colored light used in almost opposite (but nonetheless complementary) ways.

Deana Lawson and Henry TaylorThe curators hung Deana Lawson’s frank and regal photographs of black people in their domestic spaces in the same gallery as the paintings of the L.A. based artist Henry Taylor, whose paintings of black life vibrate with a mystical quality. It’s a pairing that might seem surface-level (black portraits with black portraits), but the work resonates together, going way beyond similarities in subject matter.

Jordan Wolfson and Asad RazaLast year, Jordan Wolfson debuted Colored Sculpture, a giant metal marionette that was brutally thrown across David Zwirner’s Chelsea gallery, with face-recognition technology allowing the doll to look viewers in the eye, making the whole experience unnervingly personal. Wolfson’s Biennial contribution, Real Violence, takes it a step further—and maybe a step too far. It’s an immersive virtual reality experience in which one watches the artist beat a man to death, first with a baseball bat and then with his feet, in the middle of a city street in broad daylight. It is as dreadful as it sounds, and even knowing that the victim is an animatronic doll augmented by CGI is of little comfort. Sickly clever and genuinely shocking, it left me dreading the fast-approaching day when virtual reality is indistinguishable from actual reality. Real Violence will no doubt be the most discussed work from the Biennial (and probably of the whole season), and I can only thank the Whitney curators for placing it directly adjacent to Asad Raza’s peaceful installation of living trees, including cherry blossoms that have just started to bloom.

Dana Schutz and Samara GoldenStepping off the Whitney’s fifth-floor elevator, the first thing one sees is a monumental Dana Schutz canvas from the artist’s Elevator series. The figures are boxed in by the grey doors of the lift (it mirrors, of course the viewer’s experience in the museum building), but everybody is nonetheless falling on top of each other, arms jousting, legs akimbo. Nearby, a Samara Golden installation titled The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes faces the windows along the West Side Highway. Golden has built everyday urban spaces (a cubicle-laden office, a gym) in layers like those of a skyscraper, mirrored to multiplying and confusing effect—but everything has gone to rot. Schutz and Golden’s works are vibrantly colored and visually stunning, but with both it doesn’t take long to see that something’s not quite right.

Aliza Nisenbaum, La Talaverita, Sunday Morning NY Times, 2016. Collection of the artist; courtesy T293 Gallery, Rome and Mary Mary, Glasgow

Aliza Nisenbaum and Frances StarkIn a process that she describes as “political witnessing,” Mexico City-born artist Aliza Nisenbaum paints the people of her immigrant community who are overlooked (and often even unseen) by the government and society at large. The curators hung Nisenbaum’s paintings in a room next door to Frances Stark’s huge canvases, which are based on Ian F. Svenonius’s book Censorship Now!! and which demand censure of the art world along with the government and most of western civilization. Nisenbaum and Stark go about their politics in categorically different ways—inclusion, as opposed to open warfare—but viewed together, they equally represent the spirit of this Biennial.

The Whitney Biennial opens today, and is on view until June 11. 99 Gansevoort Street.