Whitney Biennial 2017: Best Performance Artist 'Seb-The Younger' By Barry Kostrinsky

Whitney Biennial 2017: Best Performance Artist 'Seb-The Younger'
By Barry Kostrinsky

There is so much wrong with the Whitney Biennial I hardly know where to start. The every two year show of American artists is anything but that. I asked someone if the last biennial was two or three years ago and they quipped back it is a biennial, it was two years ago. Actually it was three years ago. The museum truthfully tells they were not ready for the show in the new building and gave themselves an extra year. lyingly they say it took the curators a long time to visit all the studios across the country. The exhibit is suppose to be of American artists. What is an American artist these days? Indeed a good 30% don't live nor work in the US. I don't find much use for national cheering in exhibitions but if you claim to be American have only American cheese, no matter how inferior it is to Gruyere. And what is the title of the exhibit? There is none. Indeed such a disperse group of artists makes a title hard to stick to many of the members, maybe a good title would be," Politically, Financially and Socially correct enough to make it here".

Seb-The younger and a young Pablo

The highlight of the show was the performance artist that drove in from Canada-for a day. Did you miss him? His mother drove him, because if Seb, the 8 year old did so it might have been a short lived performance act. Seb regularly goes to venues he wants to draw the art at and he knew the Whitney show was important. He plopped himself down in front of a work he liked and Seb went at it. All that is right about art is in Seb. He comes, he draws, he leaves. Yes, he has an Instagram (artbyseb) but otherwise he is a non-promoting, non-cocktail party going artists. He does not hob nob with dumb door knobs.

As for the some of the other artists in the exhibit not much can be said that is so flattering. I think of all the art teachers that teach art in schools and work with kids and the great work they do encouraging art. Then at the Whitney I see one artist has cannibalized their efforts, opened a classroom in the museum and has his Whitney exhibit in their school. Why doesn't he just teach art daily for ten years? Is the Whitney the proper format for this or a waste of the museums main space. It does have an education department.

Indeed I got to see a woman lead a group of young interested children and families around the exhibit. It could not have been more disheartening. The Whitney staff 'teacher' gave the kids a list and they were to look at art works in a defined area and check off the materials they noticed in the art. At one point she walked over to a few of the kids and told them, no, you must not look over there, it is beyond the boundaries of the exercise. Was she teaching them to look or to be robotic? Have you ever read a review of an art exhibit? It is not the art speak that gets my ire these days but the lack of content and the focus on descriptions that would make a robot's mom proud that gets me. It is amazing how little can be said with so many words of bland description, No doubt the Whitney un-educator was attempting to develop the ignorant curators of tomorrow.

McCovey and Gehrig

Ready for another swing at the Whitney? I was at an event 6 months ago where members get to mingle with the poor, only kidding the poor can't get into the Whitney, they are blocked by the entrance fee. The event was for members and had small group tours. I listened to one of the tour guides and asked of the photography show she was discussing what camera did the photographer use. She blushed as one of the devil girls did while shopping in the movie "The Devils Advocate" and her beauty turned beastly. She did not know nor think it important. Later I spied the photographer with his camera in a photograph, indeed the main curator and the artist thought it important. What really irked me was that after an enjoyable drink on the terrace (the Whitney is more of a beautiful building than a museum) I headed to the elevators to exit and saw another tour. I heard a different tour guide repeating the same lecture word for word. To think the education these upscale gallerinas to-be curators went through to just recite meaningless bull makes me glad they owe $100,000 of collegiate debt.

Above, gallerinas who can't dance from an HBO show

One highlight of the show and the most liked by visitors- a fact I confirmed with a guard, is the work on the west wall with the mirrors and all the micro sections of larger than life dollhouse gone mad settings. It is fascinating and dizzying and belongs in the Ringling Museum but not the Whitney.

A show full of baloney by Pope L

Key themes that show up are: "Black is the new everything" as the art world catches up for 400 years of racial transgression in one exhibit; Trees and greenery are hot in the art world today. Naturally it is dirt that is clean and neat and compartmentalized in a nice box. This part of the show makes one wonder if it is part of the show at all. Trite self important stories are told by the attendants as if they are god like, about single objects they added to tell of the plain meaning of their tale. Plain indeed.
Is this show full of baloney? Yes, there is a nice pink grid room with images of Jews draw on baloney to boot by William Pope L. Oddly this was not the upsetting 'socially incorrect' piece in the show. Dana Shutz won the Palme D'or for that. When I brought friends to see her piece that raised eyebrows and arms in lowly high tombs of thoughts in minds of the mindless everyone seemed to say the same thing,'this is what the fuss is about". No Adam Fuss was not in the exhibit. However the argument against a white female artist using imagery of a lynched black child was moronic and shows how dumb the art world's thinking can get. Can only bearded men paint bearded men? At least Van Gogh got that right.

Why has contemporary art failed so badly? It might be the link with the wealthy, it might be the new uniformity or it might be the artist as producer and manufacturer that is at the root. Indeed who can make art these days unless you had mom and dad pay for the education, support you when you interned without pay and just some cheap sex and who can afford all those black dresses and muscular legs the gym built?
There was a day when artists worked in the studio by themselves and made art. There were many times when artists were slaves to their masters in the studio too. We have abolished slavery and replaced it with minimum wage. I know an artist that keeps a whip mounted in his studio. And then there is the artist I know that does not have many ideas other than those he gets them from his assistants and Instagram. He does not make most of his art and does not color in his drawings. He is a popular artist today, a true older outsider to some important gallerists. But that is a story for another day. We get what we deserve in this worst of all possible art worlds.

Am I being fair to all the artists in the exhibit? No. Above De Nieves beaded and balled colorful sublime whimsical characters are reminiscent of Nick Cave's work and early primal art forms. His work caught my eye at the fairs in March and are a stand-out.

Miss it before it closes on June 11th

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2017Biennial