So, the Whitney Biennial opens tomorrow. All the info is here. It’s the show that everyone loves to hate, blah blah blah. I’m really excited that George Condo is included. Here’s one of his paintings:
Condo is awesome. I went to his studio last year with a friend. He wasn’t around, but his assistant was there. It was ridiculously chaotic. His studio was in a townhouse on the upper east side. There were medium-size paintings leaning up against the walls all around, and a couple of guitars were laying about, one of them still plugged into a guitar pedal and an amp. The main painting he was working on was leaned on the arms and back of a wire chair. There were definitely fumes and smoke hanging out there. I’m most excited about seeing his work there.
My friend works as an occasional assistant to Josephine Meckseper, who is also in this biennial. She gave a good talk about her contribution to the Guggenheim’s “Contemplating the Void” show. It’s cool, and you can still see it: the Guggenheim invited a couple hundred artists to imagine whatever they’d like, in their wildest fantasies, to occupy the main atrium of the museum. The projects ranged from the installation of a complex spiral of reflective mylar, to a gigantic clitoris, to an oil rig (Meckseper’s idea). Here’s a photo of the curators of the biennial:
Their names are Gary Carrion-Murayari and Francesco Bonami. I’m open to what they’ve done. Maybe it’ll be cool? More to come on that, clearly.
