The Great Whitney Biennial 2008 Re-Post

by Steven Kaplan

In preparation for, or perhaps in lieu of my own discussion of the show everyone loves to bash, here are selections from texts posted elsewhere: by Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker, by Holland Cotter in The New York Times, by Alexandra Peers and Carly Berwick in New York Magazine (we still await the voice of The Saltz), by David Cohen in The New York Sun, even selections from Artforum.com and Artnet.

They are randomly ordered and vehemently out of context. My original idea was to attribute each snippet, but it flows better without, and you can always look up the authors online.

Here then, for better or worse: The Great Whitney Biennial 2008 Re-Post. Feel free to add new items in Comments.

mildly unhappy and restlessly alert
an unglamorous, even prosaic affair
a new, gray mood among younger artists
a fraternal, anarchic gathering
uncharismatic surfaces, complicated back stories
a decline in producer confidence
work that seems to be in a transitional, questioning mode
things half-finished or things falling apart
a boho biennial ... a neo-hippy ethos
conventionally anti-conventional, like most of the world’s biennials
art as conversation rather than as statement, testing this, trying that
willfully half-baked
self-consciously scrappy, ephemeral, loose-at-the-edges art
two decades of academic postmodernizing have trailed off into embarrassed silence
Janson’s History of Conceptual Art meets Home Depot
heedless of traditional beauty
a key stage in the “dark night of the soul,” preceding redemption
formally cohesive but ... a bit grim
the prevailing mood ... is of casual idealism
the attraction of abjection
dissipatedness and ephemerality
tentative and half-done
confused feelings are a problem only if you insist on making them one
questions asked, not answered
embraces failure ... humorously and solipsistically
truth that is and is not true
a philosophy of “lessness”
a stranger who has forgotten his name and importunes you, on the off chance that you know it
a stony refusal to believe that we ever know what we see
a burbling, flimsy abundance of collaborative and participatory activities
wryly self-aware neo-hippie outlook
unabashed about the importance of social networks
leftovers from a really good party
a far cry from the expected debauchery
a tremendous sense of displacement and loss
the embrace of locality is part of the work
the suddenly exact middle of nowhere

Additional Comments: Steven Kaplan

other counties heard from:

the reuse and transformation of discarded parts and found images
full of construction and deconstruction, collapsing structures and structures only half-built
the mundane fancies itself novel
non-confrontational, blissy, very much about art practice
nothing more than slightly irritating
an effort to keep reality at least an arm's length away
may disappoint even some of its most loyal fans
all about healing, and the best therapy appears to be art itself
a crowded, noisy, frantic experience
an unmistakable art-school feel


Comments: Sandy Lazzar	It was the best in recent years with quite a few bad apples in the tree. Those bad apples are what ever one may decide they don't like. Myself, thought less artists is better. The Armory was weak for the most part. Not very well thought out with only a few exceptions. I won't name any exceptions but then I was only there 4 times. My Whitney visit was 3.

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