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WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2019

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Nicole Eisenman’s aptly named Procession nearly proceeded out of the Whitney Biennial (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Wednesday – Monday through September 22, $18-$25 (eighteen and under free; pay-what-you-wish Fridays 7:00 – 9:30)
Some programs require advance registration and/or tickets
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The most viscerally entertaining work at the 2019 Whitney Biennial is Nicole Eisenman’s aptly named Procession, which first proceeded onto the sixth floor terrace, then nearly proceeded out of the building. The France-born, Brooklyn-based artist was part of a protest against the Whitney’s vice chairman, Warren Kanders, whose Safariland company makes tear-gas canisters, among other items used by security forces on civilians around the world. Eight artists — Eisenman, Michael Rakowitz, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicholas Galanin, Eddie Arroyo, Agustina Woodgate, and Christine Sun Kim — demanded their work be removed from the biennial as long as Kanders remained on the board; they were responding to an original call for a boycott made by Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett. Two years ago, artist and writer Black argued that Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket, depicting Emmett Till in his coffin, “must go,” claiming it was cultural appropriation. The Whitney decided to add signage to Schutz’s canvas, explaining the controversy and letting viewers decide for themselves. But this time around, the Whitney agreed to pull the contributions from the eight artists — only to stop when Kanders resigned from the board, not admitting any guilt but not wanting the story to “undermine the important work of the Whitney.”

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Agustina Woodgate’s National Times erases “master/slave” time (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The site-specific Procession is an oddball collection of near-mythical bronze and plaster figures trudging along, a mix of classical and contemporary styles. Visitors are allowed to walk on the platform and get up close to the individual elements, which contain plenty of humor; watch out for the gaseous release. If you’d like to comment on the piece, Eisenman has a message for you: “How’s my sculpting? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.” Meanwhile, after much consternation, Marcus Fischer opted to keep his audio installation, Ascent/Dissent, in the Allison and Warren Kanders Stairway as a tribute to Felix Gonzalez Torres’s Untitled (America) string of lightbulbs that hang down the center of the stairwell. For more on the Kanders situation, Forensic Architecture’s eye-opening Triple-Chaser digs deep into the making and distribution of tear-gas canisters using an AI algorithm.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Joe Minter’s ’63 Foot Soldiers is composed of found objects (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The rest of the survey of twenty-first-century American art is, as always, a hit-or-miss affair, with many works dealing with international sociopolitical issues. Alexandra Bell’s Friday, April 21, 1989 — Front Page looks at how the New York Daily News reported the Central Park Five case. Bennani’s Mission Teens invites viewers to sit in a tropical “video viewing garden” to experience her films on colonialism. Robert Bittenbender uses garbage he collected in Long Island City to create wall sculptures that comment on gentrification. Kota Ezawa’s large-scale animation National Anthem was made from smaller watercolors of football players taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sofía Gallisá Muriente explores the fraught relationship between mainland America and Puerto Rico in Lluvia con Nieve (Rain with Snow), as does Daniel Lind-Ramos in his found-object sculptures Sentinels and Maria-Maria; the latter reimagines the Virgin Mary through Hurricane Maria, which devastated his homeland.

Calvin Marcus (1988-), Los Angeles Painting, 2018. Watercolor and vinyl paint on linen, 79 x 101 5/8 in. (200 x 258 cm). Image courtesy the artist; Clearing, New York and Brussels; and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

Calvin Marcus, Los Angeles Painting, watercolor and vinyl paint on linen, 2018 (image courtesy the artist; Clearing, New York and Brussels; and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles)

Three videos by Ilana Harris-Babou take on such issues as reparations and redlining. Joe Minter’s ’63 Foot Soldiers uses found materials, including license plates, signs, helmets, sneakers, and a small flag, to reference the civil rights movement and the current state of wealth and class inequality. Woodgate’s National Times consists of clocks keeping “master/slave” time, the minute hand equipped with sandpaper that slowly erases the numbers. In My Soul Remainer, ballet star Jock Soto dances to Laura Ortman’s violin, playing a combination of musical notes and environmental sounds amid a mountain landscape. On select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, five dancers (Hector Cerna, Tiffany Mangulabnan, Charles Gowin, Violetta Komyshan, Josep Maria Monreal Vidal, Amy Saunder, Mauricio Vera, Allison Walsh, Jennifer Whalen, Tyler Zydel) move within Brendan Fernandes’s The Master and Form scaffold-like installation, in which the performers get ready at individual spots where they interact with ash wood and leather works on black carpets, their bodies mimicking the shape of the sculpture, then inhabit a central scaffold-like installation that looks like it belongs in a children’s playground before grabbing on to floor-to-ceiling ropes lined up in front of full-length windows.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brendan Fernandes’s The Master and Form is performed Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Two of the most striking images in the show are Curran Hatleberg’s Untitled (Camaro), a photograph of a red Camaro stuck on top of two dumpsters in a junkyard, and Calvin Marcus’s gorgeous Los Angeles Painting, a fiery red future visible through a car windshield; both can be seen as harbingers of doom, a theme that hovers over this biennial, though the exhibit, curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, is not without hope. Also keep an eye out for impressive works by Simone Leigh, Brian Belott, Todd Gray, Maia Ruth Lee, and the late Barbara Hammer. Below are the remaining special screenings and live performances; some require advance tickets or RSVP.

Thursday, September 5
and
Saturday, September 7

Autumn Knight: Sanity TV, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10, 7:30

Saturday, September 7
Whitney Block Walk, free with advance RSVP, 4:30, 5:00, 5:30, 6:00

Friday, September 13
Steffani Jemison with Garrett Gray: On Similitude, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10, 7:30

Saturday, September 14
Whitney Block Walk, free with advance RSVP, 4:30, 5:30

Sunday, September 15
From Seneca Village to Brooklyn: A Conversation with Tomashi Jackson, with Tourmaline, Tsubasa Berg, Diana diZerega, Jonathan Kuhn, Meredith B. Linn, Kelly Mena, K-Sue Park, Nan Rothschild, Marie Warsh, and Stephen Witt, third floor, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, free with advance RSVP, 7:30

Thursday, September 19
Madeline Hollander — Ouroboros: Gs, Pamella and Daniel DeVos Family Outdoor Largo, free with museum admission, 5:00 – 9:00

Friday, September 20, 7:00
and
Saturday, September 21, 4:00

What Was Always Yours and Never Lost, short films followed by a Q&A with curator Sky Hopinka and some of the filmmakers, Susan and John Hess Family Theater, $10

KEVIN BEASLEY: A VIEW OF A LANDSCAPE

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cotton gin motor is centerpiece of Kevin Beasley exhibition at the Whitney (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through March 10, $18-$25
Performances January 26, February 16, and March 2, free with museum admission
212-570-3600
whitney.org

In 2011, artist and automotive enthusiast Kevin Beasley went to his family’s Virginia farm and was surprised to see that it was planted with cotton for the first time. The Yale MFA candidate picked some of the cotton and brought it home with him, wanting to incorporate the material into his work. Searching on eBay, Beasley found a 2200-pound cotton gin motor for sale in Maplesville, Alabama, where it had been in use from 1940 to 1973, overlapping with the heart of the civil rights movement; Selma, where the march to Montgomery began in 1965, is only thirty miles away from Maplesville. Beasley, now based in Brooklyn with a studio in Astoria, then combined the personal with the political and the historical to create the powerful exhibition “View of a Landscape,” continuing at the Whitney through March 10. The centerpiece of the show is the cotton gin motor, which Beasley transported from Alabama following the route of the Great Migration. At the Whitney, the motor is encased in a soundproof glass and steel vitrine in a room by itself, as if not only on display but on trial. Beasley has attached multiple audio wires to the motor, turning it into a musical instrument; the wires connect to modular synthesizers and processors in the next room, emitting electronic sounds throughout the day, evoking Robert Morris’s 1961 “Box with the Sound of Its Own Making.”

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Campus” and “The Acquisition” are two of three freestanding walls that are part of Kevin Beasley’s “View of a Landscape” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The installation is supplemented with a trio of slab sculptures, eight-hundred-pound eight-by-ten-feet freestanding walls made of articles related to Beasley, his family, and slavery, focusing on race, labor, and ancestry. Titled “The Reunion,” “Campus,” and “The Acquisition,” they are like excavations dug out of the soil, composed of polyurethane resin, raw cotton, garbage bags, clothing, du-rags, music equipment, and elements from Beasley’s time at Yale, from his cap and gown to harlequin masks. Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin in 1793, was also a Yale grad; the Eli Whitney Students Program currently helps those who have taken five or more years off from school. In addition, Yale itself was named after slave trader Elihu Yale, and Eli Whitney is related to Harry Payne Whitney, who married Gertrude Vanderbilt, the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1931. The installation is a deep dig, no stone left unturned as Beasley puts it all together into a cohesive unit
.

(photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Kevin Beasley kicked off the first of several related concerts on January 12 at the Whitney (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

On January 12, Beasley, who was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2013-14, played the first of four concerts using the cotton gin motor, manipulating the many wires hooked up to several synthesizers in the listening room. He was joined by multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist Taja Cheek for two hours of compelling noise. Wearing a Frederick Douglass sweatshirt and a serious mien, Beasley alternated sounds, from the industrial roar of the motor to space-age riffs, not smiling until the show was over. I sat on the large woofer near the center, which made it feel like I was experiencing it in Sensurround, the bass reverberating through my body. If it’s not completely packed, you should walk around, as different sounds are emitted from the various speakers. Recognizable words occasionally came through as well, including “Freedom” and “I’m here.” There will also be concerts (free with museum admission) on January 26 at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00 with Eli Keszler, February 16 at 6:00 with Beasley, and March 2 at 6:00, 7:00, and 8:00 with Jlin. The line started about an hour before showtime, so get ready. And Beasley will be in conversation with Daphne Brooks and Jace Clayton on February 1 at 6:30 ($10).

MARY CORSE: A SURVEY IN LIGHT

Mary Corse, “Untitled (Space + Electric Light),” Argon light, plexiglass, and high-frequency generator, 1968 ( Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; museum purchase with funds from the Annenberg Foundation. Photograph by Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

Mary Corse, “Untitled (Space + Electric Light),” argon light, plexiglass, and high-frequency generator, 1968 ( Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; museum purchase with funds from the Annenberg Foundation. Photograph by Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through November 25, $18-$25
212-570-3600
whitney.org

“Your perception creates the painting,” Mary Corse says in a video about her first museum survey, “Mary Corse: A Survey in Light,” continuing at the Whitney through November 25. Since the mid-1960s, the California native has been addressing unique aspects of light, time, and space in her paintings and sculptures, the vast majority of which are shades of white. Many of the works change as you approach them, appearing different when seen from different angles and distances, forming an ever-changing relationship between viewer, surface, and light. “Corse’s White Light paintings are not works that depict movement but rather works that embody, and require, movement. To truly see Corse’s art we must move: there is no ideal vantage point,” Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg writes in the foreword to the catalog. “As much as we might try, we cannot ever find the perfect viewing position; experiencing a Corse painting is in and of itself a process.” The exhibition consists of two dozen works ranging from shaped monochrome paintings, screenprints, and acrylic on wood and plexiglass to her White Light, Black Light, and Black Earth series, documenting her changing use of materials as she began incorporating glass microspheres (the material used to reflect light in road markings), hidden Tesla coils to transmit electricity, and argon gas into her work. “I try to bring reality into the painting,” she says in the video. “I try to bring the reality of our moment here on this ball of mud; it’s not that the painting relates to nature but it is nature.”

Installation view of “Mary Corse: A Survey in Light,” Whitney Museum of American Art (© Mary Corse. Photograph by Ron Amstutz)

Installation view of “Mary Corse: A Survey in Light,” Whitney Museum of American Art (© Mary Corse. Photograph by Ron Amstutz)

The work demands, and rewards, viewer engagement in a way that is distinct from that of other artists from the Light and Space movement, which includes James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, and Doug Wheeler. Divided into “Beginnings,” “Painting with Light,” “Black Earth, Black Light,” and “New Forms in White Light,” the Whitney show traces Corse’s career and experimental process primarily chronologically as she followed her own path. In 1970, the Berkeley-born artist moved away from Los Angeles to live and work in remote Topanga Canyon, building her own kiln and enjoying a more private life. “Untitled (Two Triangular Columns),” a pair of eight-plus-feet-high white columns with a space between them, echoes such paintings as “Untitled (Hexagonal White)” and “Untitled (White Diamond, Negative Stripe),” which feature a strip running down their centers. An entrancing glowing light emanates from “Untitled (White Light Series)” and “Untitled (Space + Electric Light).” Shapes and colors shift as you make your way around “Untitled (White Grid, Vertical Strokes)” and “Untitled (Horizontal Strokes).” Such 1970s pieces as “Untitled (Black Light Painting)” and “Untitled (Black Earth Series)” offer a stark counterpoint to the white light works. The more recent Inner Band paintings are like optical illusions in subtle motion. Exhibition curator Kim Conaty writes in the catalog, “For Corse, the subjectivity of perception — the acknowledgment that everyone experiences visual phenomena differently — has been a consistent driving force in her artistic practice for more than fifty years.” This survey ably represents Corse’s career, a long overdue exhibition that is, dare we say, illuminating. (In addition, Dia:Beacon has a new gallery of Corse’s work on view through 2021.)

A CHILLING MAKE BELIEVE: ALEXIS ROCKMAN ON GRANT WOOD

Grant Wood (1891–1942), Spring Turning, 1936. Oil on composition board, 18 1⁄4 x 40 1⁄8 in. (46.4 x 101.9 cm). Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; gift of Barbara B. Millhouse 1991.2.2. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Image courtesy Reynolda House Museum of American Art, affiliated with Wake Forest University

Grant Wood, Spring Turning, oil on composition board, 1936 (image courtesy Reynolda House Museum of American Art, affiliated with Wake Forest University)

Who: Alexis Rockman
What: Artists on artists talk
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, Floor 3, Susan and John Hess Family Gallery and Theater, 99 Gansevoort St., 212-570-3600
When: Friday, April 6, $10, 6:30
Why: New York City native Alexis Rockman, who creates fantastical outdoor worlds in his paintings, will be at the Whitney on April 6 at 6:30 to discuss the landscapes of Grant Wood in conjunction with the exhibition “Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables,” which continues at the museum through June 10. The show reveals Wood to be more than just a portraitist who is most famous for “American Gothic”; among his landscapes at the Whitney are Young Corn, Stone City, The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, and Spring in the Country. Rockman’s “The Great Lakes Cycle” is now on view at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Tickets for the talk, “A Chilling Make Believe: Alexis Rockman on Grant Wood,” are $10; if you can’t get to the Whitney or the event is sold out, it will be livestreamed on YouTube.

ZOE LEONARD IN CONVERSATION WITH REBECCA SOLNIT

Zoe Leonard (b. 1961), detail of You see I am here after all, 2008. 3,851 vintage postcards, 11 × 10 1/2 × 147 ft. (3.35 × 3.2 × 44.8 m) overall. Installation view, Dia: Beacon, Beacon, New York, 2008. Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photograph by Bill Jacobson, New York

Zoe Leonard, detail, You see I am here after all, 3,851 vintage postcards, 2008 (installation view, Dia: Beacon, Beacon, New York, 2008. Collection of the artist; courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photograph by Bill Jacobson, New York)

Who: Zoe Leonard, Rebecca Solnit
What: Zoe Leonard in Conversation with Rebecca Solnit
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St., 212-570-3600
When: Friday, March 16, 6:30
Why: In conjunction with the large-scale retrospective “Zoe Leonard: Survey,” which opened March 2 and continues at the Whitney through June 10, New York native Zoe Leonard will sit down with writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit to talk about art, feminism, politics, photography, and landscapes. Don’t worry if the event is already sold out; the Whitney will be live-streaming it on Facebook.

mecca vazie andrews and the MOVEMENT movement: [title]

(photo courtesy of mecca vazie andrews)

mecca vazie andrews and the MOVEMENT movement will present new immersive work in dialogue with Laura Owens exhibition at the Whitney (photo courtesy of mecca vazie andrews)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Saturday, February 3, $10, 4:00
Exhibition continues through February 4
212-570-3600
whitney.org
meccavazieandrews.tumblr.com

In conjunction with the exhibition Laura Owens, a midcareer survey of the work of the LA-based artist, the Whitney is hosting the immersive multimedia performance [title], by LA dancer, choreographer, and teacher mecca vazie andrews and her company, the MOVEMENT movement. The fifty-minute presentation will feature movement, sound, and projection as andrews responds to Owens’s radical style of painting, exploring freedom, enlightenment, and the future. The performance takes place on February 3 at 4:00, the day before the exhibition closes; tickets are ten dollars in addition to museum admission. Also currently on view at the Whitney are “Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined,” “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017,” “Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900-1960,” and “Experiments in Electrostatics: Photocopy Art from the Whitney’s Collection, 1966-1986.”

HÉLIO OITICICA: TO ORGANIZE DELIRIUM

Whitney retrospective offers a journey into Hélio Oiticica’s colorful “Éden” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney retrospective offers a journey into Hélio Oiticica’s colorful “Éden” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through October 1, $18-$25
212-570-3600
whitney.org

In 1971, Brazilian artist and activist Hélio Oiticica proposed “Subterranean Tropicália Projects,” a participatory public artwork for Central Park. While it never was realized, the extensive Whitney retrospective “Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium” is a kind of indoor interactive park, offering visitors entry into a communal, collaborative space in New York City. The exhibition, which continues through October 1, comprises painting, sculpture, film, writings, installation, and paraphernalia documenting Oiticica’s too-brief career, which included a seven-year period in the Lower East Side in Manhattan that initially fueled his artistic desires but ultimately left him frustrated and disappointed. “I feel as if I’m in prison in this infernal island,” he wrote to Lygia Clark regarding immigration problems related to his homosexuality. A Neo-Concretist who was also a member of Grupo Frente, he died in Brazil in 1980 from a massive stroke at the age of forty-two. However, “To Organize Delirium” is filled with life, and the more you put into the show, the more you can understand Oiticica’s methods — while having a great time. You can take your shoes off and walk barefoot through water, sand, and gravel in “PN27 Penetrable, Rijanviera” and greet parrots, watch an infomercial, and read poems by Roberta Camila Salgado in “Tropicália,” Oiticica’s groundbreaking 1967 installation that gave its name to the Brazilian musical, artistic, and sociopolitical movement that emerged from South America in the 1960s. You can wave a flag, take a rest on an enclosed mattress, and walk through sand, dry leaves, water, foam flakes, crushed bricks, and straw in “Éden,” while in another room you can put on any of numerous politically tinged Parangolé capes and dance with dissidents in a digital slideshow.

Hélio Oiticica. Installation view. CC5 Hendrix-War,1973.Thirty-three 35mm color slides transferred to digital slideshow, sound, and hammocks. Site Specific Collections of César and Claudio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Oto Gillen

Hélio Oiticica, installation view, “CC5 Hendrix-War,” thirty-three 35mm color slides transferred to digital slideshow, sound, and hammocks, 1973 (Site Specific Collections of César and Claudio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y. Photograph by Oto Gillen)

You can play a game of pool as part of “Appropriation — Snooker Room, after Van Gogh’s ‘Night Café.’” For “Block Experiments in Cosmococa, Program in Progress: CC1 Trashiscapes,” you are encouraged to sit on a mattress or pillow in a large room and file your nails while watching slides and listening to music, combining creativity and leisure, what Oiticica called “creleisure,” which references the artist’s use of cocaine. You can gently swing in a hammock and groove to Jimi as part of “CC5 Hendrix — War,” a collaboration with Neville D’Almeida. Unfortunately, you no longer can interact with such architectural works as “NC1 Small Nucleus 1” and “PN1 Penetrable” because they are too fragile, but you can marvel at how they evoke the geometric patterns Oiticica used in his painting series “Metaesquema” and his plywood “Spatial Reliefs.” There are also unedited films of the Gay Pride Parade, the Fillmore East, the South Bronx, drag performer Mario Montez, and artist Lee Jaffe playing on small monitors. It’s a revelatory show about an important, utterly original twentieth-century artist who immersed his oeuvre in social and political concerns while inviting everyone into a playful world where art is everywhere. To get in the mood for the exhibition, the Whitney has a Tropicália playlist, with music by João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Os Mutantes, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, and others that you can listen to here.