Whitney Biennial Favorites.

I walked through the Whitney Biennial twice this weekend. Below is a list of my favorites (in order) along with 2 disappointments.

#1  Michael Asher – his “piece” is having the Whitney open 72 hours straight beginning May 26 @12:01am. I’ll be there at 4 am for sure – I’ve never visited a museum and then watched the sun rise… and then had breakfast.. and then gone into work.

#2  Kerry Tribe – A fantastic, must-see double projection film where one film is 20 seconds behind the other. Extremely smart and poetic.

#3  R.H. Quaytman – Always a favorite of mine in my gallery visits, Quaytman delivers something more for the Biennial. Highlighting the iconic window in the room, she suddenly made me consider that window as HER sculpture.

#4  Sharon Hayes – I don’t like video art in large curated shows– mostly because I like to watch films in their entirety and I don’t have the patience to sit through 6+ hours of art films. But my "top list" is 3/5ths film!!! So bravo. Hayes’ film installation is fun without being silly, strange without being weird, and challenging without being difficult.

#5  Ari Marcopoulos – The film was good (2 kids mixing “effects pedals”) but the context made the experience. The HUGE room makes the film feel more claustrophobic and gives you room to dance to music that is… undanceable.

Disappointments:

Alex Hubbard - The artist I was most looking forward to (see my blog post) let me down for the first time. It was both too much and not enough.

George Condo – Like him or hate him, his painting felt the most “dated” (i.e. out of date) in the whole show