No need to worry, you have until May 30th to go check out the 75th incarnation (sans theme) of the Whitney Museum’s signature exhibition. Curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, the layout of the show is very viewer friendly; it is a very manageable show with a strong selection of artists–and female artists are heavily represented finally. With fewer artists selected for this year’s show, one is able to digest the work on view without being overwhelmed and that is refreshing. The one thing that I did find a bit annoying was the bulk of video work on the 3rd floor. After awhile, one gets numb to too much video so to put it all on one floor was a bit too much for this viewer. I will say that now that I have found my favorite works in the show, I will definitely be making a return visit in order to take more time with them. Overall it is a very enjoyable biennial.

Highlights for me:

Bruce High Quality Foundation, We Like America and America Likes Us, 2010

Bruce High Quality Foundation’s “We Like America and America Likes Us” is a cool piece found on the fourth floor. A voiceover plays in a loop commenting on society while images from pop culture are projected onto the windshield of a white ambulance/hearse with glaring lights. Thought provoking.

Tauba Auerbach was born in San Francisco but lives in NYC. She manipulates largescale pieces of raw canvas by folding or rolling them. After flattening them she paints with industrial spray paint creating a tromp l’oeil effect. I had to actually go up to the canvas and look at it from the side to prove to myself that the work was indeed two-dimensional. On view are three paintings that fill one wall of the gallery in shades of salmon, maroon, and purple.

Lesley Vance, Untitled (12), 2009, oil on linen

Lesley Vance works in Los Angeles. Her abstract paintings are based on the still life tradition. Her process involves arranging a still life, photographing it and using those as the basis for her abstract paintings. She manipulates the paint with a palette knife creating compositions in which very little is recognizable but they somehow, “retain the intimacy and refinement of a traditional still life.”

Pae White, Untitled, 2010

On the third floor I enjoyed Pae White’s tapestry that fills the entryway. She creates works that manifest themselves as, “cotton’s dream of becoming something other than itself.”

Kate Gilmore, Still from Standing Here, 2010

I liked the work by Kate Gilmore that explores issues of female identity and displacement. She builds environments and then documents her attempts to conquer the obstacles they present. In high heels and a polka dot dress she attempts to climb out of a sheetrock box. This box is on display in the gallery in which the video is shown. Gilmore had another work on view at the Brooklyn Museum with a similar theme that I enjoyed and wrote about in a previous blog. Certainly a name to watch.

Rashaad Newsome is fascinated with the dance craze from the early 90s–voguing. In this work, he separates it from the cultural and historical background of its rise from underground clubs to pop culture by removing all sound and context from the viewer. In a color video a dancer moves throughout the space on a wooden floor against a white wall. Newsome sees the work as abstracted movements, not a dance performance. “I view these videos as drawings, with the dancers acting as my pen.”

Josephine Meckseper, Mall of America, 2009, video

Jospehine Meckseper’s “Mall of America” is a very interesting video work. She uses documentary footage from shop windows and rides at the Mall of America in Minneapolis and manipulates it by using red and blue filters and adding haunting music. This manipulation results in an abstraction of the known entity into a “hostile, dangerous place.”

Roland Flexner, Untitled, 2008-9, sumi ink on paper

Probably one of my favorite works is by Roland Flexner, an artist from France who lives and works in NYC. “Untitled” 2008-2009 consists of 30 sumi ink on paper drawings. The process is one used by Japanese decorative artists in which paper is laid upon the top of ink floating in water which creates a marbled effect. Flexner alters the composition further by tilting, blowing or blotting the moment before the ink is absorbed by the paper thus creating abstract compositions that often look like fantastical landscapes. I love these images.

Storm Tharp, Jodie Jill, 2009, ink, gouache, and colored pencil on paper

On the second floor I enjoyed works by Storm Tharp. He draws contours for characters on paper using water and adds mineral ink before it has a chance to dry which causes the ink to bleed creating uncertain forms and shapes. He fills in the missing pieces using paint, colored pencil, erasers, etc. He creates detailed narratives of the characters he creates including names and histories. The works are really interesting.

Aurel Schmidt, Master of the Universe: FlexMaster 3000, 2010

Aurel Schmidt is an amazing draftsman. Her intricately detailed drawings are beautiful, however, her subject matter is often ugly. This work includes flies, condoms, beer cans, and cigarette butts which all add up to a representation of a Minotaur. She questions conventions of beauty in her work and the “cyclical process of renewal and decay.”

Dawn Clements, Mrs. Jessica Drummond's, 2010

Dawn Clements has a remarkable large-scale ballpoint pen drawing on view of an interior scene. Her work is always created from real life scenes or from movies from the 1940s or 1950s, but she draws on separate sheets of paper and then combines them altogether to create what appear to be seamless but upon closer examination, are often unnatural looking environments.