Whitney Biennial

On Wednesday I went to the opening night of the Whitney Biennial, my first biennial of any kind. I have to be honest: it was a low-rent affair. Holland Cotter says it better:

...the overall tenor of the show is low-key, with work that seems to be in a transitional, questioning mode, art as conversation rather than as statement, testing this, trying that. Assemblage and collage are popular. Collaboration is common. So are down-market materials — plastic, plywood, plexiglass — and all kinds of found and recycled ingredients, otherwise known as trash.

Clever, that one... Still, Phoebe Washburn's installation, whose title as well as image is nowhere to be found on the Whitney's website, outshines all the the low-key trash. (alternate Washburn image above) Assortments of yellow and green golf balls stand in for lemons and limes in a factory-like installation that seems to create a botanically-based beverage. Upside-down buckets stabilize a wooden deck, through which plants grow with the help of clip lamps. Instant Gatorade packets flank the inner walls of the factory, making the conceptual link between golf balls, plants and beverage. Aquariums filled with colored water add an element of activity and industry.

Other works I liked were by Frances Stark (middle image) and Ry Rocklen (below). But, of course, these are not images of the work that I liked in the show. Sorry.

The only celebrity I saw the entire evening was Tracee Ellis Ross*, otherwise known as the bug-eyed girl on BET's sitcom Girlfriends. Like I said, it was a low-rent affair.

*I just found out she is also Diana Ross' daughter. I can't decide if this lowers or raises the rent...

Martha Rosler's "Semiotics of the Kitchen"

Dorothea Rockburne

This will not be a very informed post, but i just wanted to get these images up before another impulse took over. I went to MOMA yesterday and saw this piece by Dorothea Rockburne, an artist who (until now) has slipped through the cracks of my art history education. She was born in Canada in 1932 and educated at Black Mountain College, although she was significantly younger than Rauschenberg et al. The piece is titled A, C and D From Group/ And, 1970. I thought it was interesting to note the differences in its installation between 1970 (below) and 2008 (above).

Her early materials include graphite, cardboard, crude oil, chipboard and nails. i think this work is so elegant and so "felt," especially standing in front of the huge slabs or drapes or drafting tables or whatever they are. Her later work is a little on the "eh..." side. She was heavily interested in math, science and astronomy and has spent most of her later career making cosmos-esque paintings that have none of the strength in A, C and D. She turns away from "felt" materials and instead uses traditional paints on mostly handmade papers. Eh.... I am guessing her Black Mountain days finely tuned her Martian sensibilities, making work about physicality and strength and with a limited palette. Since then, it seems, she has turned Venetian. She is more in her head, more sensual and dependent on color and line. These are just my initial thoughts after seeing her work for the first time.

crazy for rachel

if the apocalypse were to happen today Rachel Harrison would be in the streets scavenging for sculptural fodder. i think that's what excites me about her work. she has completely convinced me that grotesquely-painted polystyrene forms and debris from our commercial culture go together like tires and stuffed goats. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-rauschenberg/ENS-rauschenberg.htm
maybe she is just the Robert Rauschenberg of her generation and maybe that's just what her generation needs. my generation needs. we all may need. she's 42, by the way and not necessarily so new to the art world's mainstream. She's had solo shows at both the Milwaukee Museum of Art and the SFMOMA in the early 00's. I have heard from a personal source that she is a force to be reckoned with. By that, i mean that she is fierce about her choices with her work and most likely wouldn't take well to a curator's constructive criticism. In New York her work can be seen in the New Museum's inaugural show Unmonumental, in Two Years at the Whitney and in some corner of the MOMA, i don't remember where.