Whitney Biennial: It's Just Aiiiight...

...per usual and that's pretty much a given year after year after year. There are always scattered gems hidden amongst the general detritus-- that's somehow supposed to represent an overview of the contemporary art scene -- which if these are any indicationk, but really suck. Perhaps if I were willing to sit through an entire video installation with a 5-month old dangling off my torso there'd be more to namecheck here (there was one on immigration that looked incredible). All the same, it was worth wading through for the following:

My favorite for its high-concept, sheer absurdity and overall brilliance was an installation by Mika Rottenberg called "Cheese" that left me both giddy and thoughtful like I wish the rest of the biennial had. It featured videos of women with floor-length hair galavanting about a farm (almost like livestock) milking goats and perhaps their hair(?) -- the videos were encased in this log-like shack you had to crawl inside of to get glimpses of the video screens. Though the message wasn't overt, it seemed an impressionistic meditation on mysogeny and chatel and cattle and hair care and nature without clobbering anyone over the head with any of it engendering smiles and head (and hair) scratching and thoughts. Later i found out the women were world-record hair growers (for real) with hair growing up to 13 feet.


Also really likeed Michael Smith's class portraits with his alter-ego "Mike" looking awkward and out of place in each picture. He literally took these shots at Sears with his first semester art classes over several years and his strange demeanor is just so obtuse and absurd and completley entertaining.

Melanie Schiff's large print photograph "Cannon Falls (Cobain Room)" looks just like an incredibly stark 1970s non-descript motel room with a shag carpet and a floor-to-ceiling curtains with a nude female image moving behind the curtains. It's not until you read the wall text explaining that it's the a room where Cobain slept in while recording at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnestoa that the photo takes on this incredibly eerie and ethereal mood.

Eduardo Sarabia's "The Gift" is essentially a store-room with shelving" with nonsesical products like oversized dice, large elephant legs, horse heads, memaid tails, banana boxes, chinese vases. I'm sure it's a commentary on crass commercialism or something or another -- but it's trippy on its own terms and the mismatched products have a certain strand that kept me smiling in the storage room.

Amanda Ross Ho's simple large blue kitty litter box was just straight up amusing and glad to see a space where much of the surrounding art should and could fit comfortably.

Fia Backstrom's chocolate or clay lettering that spelled out the words "Let's Decorate, Let's Do it Professionally" and "Communal Focus Group" and "Toothy Smile" --- just so banal and obtuse and somehow stuck out more than the rest

Finally, Carl Bove's "Night Sky over New York"