Stuff been seen

So I thought I'd post some stuff from last weekend in NY. No real need to post anything about the Rauschenberg show, I think the most salient thing was what we talked about before, the way you can see him lose interest in that way of working, the breakdown of the structure of the combines.

I did catch a good gallery show of Trenton Doyle Hancock, you should Netflix the second season of the art21 PBS did, it is lame in a PBS way but the part on him is pretty interesting. The work in this show was pretty good, a mix of comics linework and sensibility (including a comic he did about trying to become a vegan) but the paintings and drawings seem to work as objects while the writing the the wall helps to make it work as an environment...







The Whitney Biennial was alright, a lot of messy stuff, piles, holes in walls, etc, that might be interesting to sociology majors but not much to look at. Seems more interesting from a curator's point of view, or of criticizing the curators, like there was no real focus on the art or artists. Which is kind of funny, as the artists seem to get the most out of this...





I think of any of the work though, the video piece (image below) by Paul Chan was the most interesting- it was a video of a silhouette pointed on the floor, which reflected off the floor to the wall. The image on the floor was basically a couple of telephone poles, the wires connecting them moving like they're being blown around. Slowly, debris starts to rise from the bottom, eventually this starts to include cell phones, head phones, then bikes, cars, railroad cars. Eventually people begin to fall from the sky. The silhouettes are variously small and far away, or large and out of focus. Fairly simple and mesmerizing, and it rewarded the time it took to watch. It also worked well in the space, the people coming and going to watch worked well with it.