whitney biennal "a" list

2/13/97

The Whitney Museum's "1997 Biennial Exhibition," Mar. 20-June 1, 1997, encapsulates what's hot in new art in New York--at least, insofar as the artists somehow fall into the category of "American Art," the museum's ever-more-constricting brief. This year the Biennial is jointly organized by longtime Whitney curator and experience Biennial hand Lisa Phillips and newcomer Louise Neri, the New York editor of Parkett, a high-class, thick art journal produced on paper. This is the first exhibition--since its inauguration in 1932--that an outside curator has participated in the selection.

Is there a guiding curatorial point-of-view? Yes, say the curators, a "certain psychological intensity and a hands-on quality. The exhibition has been developed around the idea of artists' cosmologies--meticulously constructed worlds where private concerns intersect with public reality."

Doug Aitken Roman Anikushin and Bob Paris Michael Ashkin Robert Attanasio Burt Barr Zoe Beloff Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT) Douglas Blau Louise Bourgeois Chris Burden Charles Burnett Vija Celmins Abigail Child Francesco Clemente Bruce Conner Bryan Crockett Philip-Lorca diCorcia Cheryl Dunye Sam Easterson Wendy Ewald William Forsythe Leah Gilliam Michael Gitlin Felix Gonzalez-Torres Dan Graham David Hammons Ken Jacobs Ilya Kabakov Martin Kersels Annette Lawrence Iara Lee Zoe Leonard Sharon Lockhart Charles Long Kristin Lucas

Kerry James Marshall Antonio Martorell Paul McCarthy Amanda Miller Paul D. Miller Christopher Münch Bruce Nauman Gabriel Orozco Tony Oursler Laura Parnes Jennifer Pastor Raymond Pettibon Richard Phillips Lari Pittman Richard Prince Charles Ray Matthew Ritchie Jason Rhoades Aaron Rose Ed Ruscha John Schabel Katy Schimert Glen Seator Paul Shambroom David Sherman Shahzia Sikander Soundlab Shashwati Talukdar Diana Thater Cecilia Vicuña Kara Walker T.J. Wilcox Sue Williams Robert Wilson The Wooster Group

Curiously, the release notes that the next Biennial, the 1999 edition, will be postponed till the spring of 2000. The show is sponsored by Beck's.

Some further notes from the release, briefly defining some of the notably young and unfamiliar names on the list: "Katy Schimert's delicate porcelain and foil topography; Bryan Crockett's viscera of balloons; and Jennifer Pastor's artificial nature of complex plastics and special-effects constructions"...."Shazia Sikander's reformulated traditional Indian miniatures"...."Zoe Beloff's tiny cinema of memories"...."Annette Lawrence's obsessive drawings in her own blood, based on the Mayan calendar"...."Glen Seator's altered reconstruction of the Whitney Museum Director's office"...."Paul Shambroom's vivid photographs of nuclear missile stations, which present disturbing juxtapositions of man and the tools of destruction"...."the backyard microcosms, produced with specially designed cameras, of Aaron Rose, a 65-year-old photographer whose works have not been shown to the public prior to this exhibition."

Video installations in the galleries include "the Bureau of Inverse Technology's constructed surveillance of suicide leaps from the Golden Gate Bridge"...."Kristin Lucas' personal adventures in technological pathology" and "internationally acclaimed choreographer William Forsythe's dynamic dance solo for film." Also on view: "a soundscape piece by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid)."

The show also includes a mural for the museum exterior (we're not sure by who) and an installation by Louise Bourgeois of her own clothes, "collected over a lifetime and arranged provocatively."