As contemporary art moves into the 21st century, many artists are using diverse materials and creating new media as well as looking to old techniques to convey messages to their audiences.

In New Mexico, Susan Kelly, an art gallery owner, said that it is hard to define what is going on at this moment in art.

"There is no one real movement," she said. "Now there are so many different things."

In an effort to define the latest in trends, the Whitney Museum of American Art is now holding a biennial art exhibit. This art show, which started March 11 and will end May 30, chronicles the latest developments from all mediums of art.

This project took a year to complete and is the result of a year reviewing and searching for artists, who define the newest trends. The display at the Whitney Museum is a hodgepodge of eclectic pieces that proved there are no rules when it comes to creating art.

Donise English, the director of the Steel Plant Art Gallery located in the Hudson Valley, said that today each artist's idea is unique and presents a different image and feeling.

"There's all kind of direction," she said. "The content is pervasive."

However English said that one thing she noticed is that pieces are increasing in size.

"A lot of stuff is getting bigger," she said.

One of the more popular artists from the contemporary movement that exemplifies this trend is Richard Serra. English said why he is always well received.

"His pieces are just so big, difficult, and intrusive … almost dangerous," said English

Recently, Serra received $ 20 million by the Basque government in Bilbao, to create a room sized steel sculptures for the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum. The installment is expected to take 17 months to produce and install in the museum is expected to be completed by June 2005. The room will house 1,208 tons of steel at the end of Serra's project.

Serra works with steel to create huge sculptures, some of which are on display at the Dia: Beacon Art Gallery. Dia: Beacon Art Gallery is located in the Hudson Valley and displays art works from the 1960's to the present. A few of Serra's pieces are shaped in concentric circles that have openings where a person can enter and walk around.

Duben Canales, an attendant at the Dia:Beacon art gallery, said Serra created the sculptures with space to walk in and around them.

"Movement is in the space within the sculpture," Canales said. "He (Serra) wants you to enter the space; it's all about movement."

English said that other artists use their artwork to comment on current social and political aspects.

"A lot of people follow the news," she said.

Artists like Barbara Kruger take images from the mass media and create large bold works. In one of her pieces "Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)" she uses the image of a woman's face and makes a stark black and white contrast between sections of her face. This piece was intended for a massive pro choice march on April 9, 1989 in Washington D.C.

English also pointed out that many artists use themselves as subject matter for their pieces.

"People relate to themselves," she said.

Glenn Ligon is a black artist that portrays in his artwork what it is like to be black in today's society. Ligon's best known paintings have phrases or quotes painted onto the canvas. Like his painting "Untitled (How it Feels to be Colored me … Doubled)." The repeated phrase was taken from a piece by essayist Zora Neale Hurston. The repetition of the phrase "How it feels to be colored me" shows Ligon's interest in repeating words or sentences to see if their meaning changed. He also works with multimedia presentations like in his work Annotations, where he took a family photo album pictures from web sites to create his own album.

Some artists play around with the internet, computers, and electronic equipment to create artwork. Digital art uses a computer to create an image or taking a photograph and using software to change its look has become a popular way to create art. However, English said that digital art is not replacing more conventional methods. She even said that there has been a recent resurgence in painting.

"Digital art hasn't really made a big dent in art. A lot of people crave something that's made by hand," she said. "Painting has taken a back seat for a while," she said. English later said, "I don't think that it will ever go away."

Elizabeth Peyton, who is featured in the Whitney Biennial, documents her personal relationships with friends, lovers, and even idols from photographs in books and pop magazines in her paintings. Her works have included impersonal photos of people like Andy Warhol, Curt Cobain, and Napoleon.

With artists exploring numerous outlets to express themselves, some new and some old, English said it is impossible to tell where the movement is heading.

“If I knew that I’d be rich,” she said.