whitney biennial 2010.

this past week i made it down to nyc in part to check out the whitney biennial. i had heard quite a bit about it, mostly because of how many women were included this year.

my impression of the show had very little to do with the amount of women (although it is exciting to see so many ladies represented), but more to do with the amount of video. i have nothing against video art, but i find it rather exhausting. and when you have almost an entire floor of video installations in the whitney it gets a little overwhelming. i felt that the amount of videos detracted from the overall show. too many videos start to take away from each other. chances are most people are skipping most of those dark rooms in favor of something they can look at in their own time (the light helps too).

my favorites from the show are as follows:

James Casebere, whose large scale photos of handcrafted communities were at once beautiful, and a reminder of things that are wrong with our society (overdevelopment, foreclosures, gentrification, etc). bonus points for the subject matter being based in Dutchess County, NY.

i also loved Tam Tran's photographs of her precocious nephew. the composition paired with subject matter was spot on, and she took something that could be very boring to photograph and made it interesting.

Nina Berman's documentation of a severely disfigured veteran made me extremely uncomfortable and for that i commend her. her shots feel voyeuristic because they are so personal. the heartache that is felt by the two people she photographed is startlingly clear. the portrait studio wedding picture is especially moving.


my last pick for best in show is Hannah Greely. her recreation of a typical dive bar booth is comforting in its familiarity and simultaneously confusing because of its intentionally fabricated nature. details look right from far away, but up close things seem slightly amiss. the handcrafted pay phone attached to the back of the bar is especially good.

so most of my favorites were photographers, and i might be a bit biased in choosing them as the standouts, but that's what blogging is all about after all.

now here are some of the artists i was least impressed with:
Maureen Gallace
Jesse Aron Green
Rashaad Newsome
Charles Ray


i think the biennial is also worth a look, but overall i wasn't that impressed this year. maybe next year they can have both women and excitement.