2014 Whitney Biennial
Sergei Tcherepnin, Ambient Marcel (Waiting,
Working, Erupting), 2014 (detail). Marcel Breuer
lights, transducers, amplifier, and high definition
media player. Collection of the artist; courtesy
Murray Guy, New York.
Charlemagne Palestine, hauntteddd!! n huntteddd!! n daunttlesss!! n shuntteddd!!, 2014
(detail). Twelve-channel sound installation. Collection of the artist.
108
PEACHY
impatient with the notoriously slow
elevators and opts for the stairs, Charlemagne Palestine has a surprise waiting for those with sturdy quadriceps.
Not to spoil the fun but stuffed animals,
fabric, speakers, and resonant concrete
combine for a hypnotic stairwell frenzy.
“I’ve been coming to the museum since
it was built, and I’ve always loved the
staircase,” said the artist. “This particular kind of concrete has a fantastic resonance. It’s Taj Mahal-esque.”
THE CULT OF THE DEAD
Perhaps it is a bit morbid to note but
ghosts of dead artists haunt this year’s
Biennial. The painter Richard Hawkins
and the photographer Catherine Opie
have organized a remembrance of their
art school classmate Tony Greene,
who died of AIDS at thirty-five.
Greene painted sensual patterns on
tinted photographs of animals and
male bodies. There is also a piece displaying the ephemera of the flamboyant and lascivious art critic Gregory
Battock who was murdered in 1980
and yet another work on documentarian Malachi Ritscher who died of
self-immolation in protest of the Iraq
War in 2006. And we are just getting
started…this Biennial has turned the
Whitney into a veritable morgue.