Move over vaporetti — there’s a new barge in town. Slated to gracing the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice over the past five days was a project by The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, entitled “Commercial Break.” The exhibition is organized by Neville Wakefield, a contemporary art writer prolific curator globally. Powered by POST Magazine, “Commercial Break” considers itself to be a provocative architectural intervention in a city where no advertising is traditionally displayed. Unfortunately, as Artinfo reported, the city pulled permits a few days before and the videos were instead screened at the project’s Bauer Hotel party. The woman behind the “GCCC” is Dasha Zukhova, girlfriend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich; it is the institution’s second project in Venice.  All videos are now viewable on the exhibition’s website.

Among videos featured is one by  Richard Phillips, starring Lindsey Lohan.

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Strange Attractors, Aki Sasmoto – all photographs by Oskar Proctor for Art Observed.

This week the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York opened its doors for the 75th edition if its defining exhibition: The Biennial. Simply titled, 2010, the show rejects an organizational theme and instead uses time as its marker in a matter-of-fact cross-section of American art today. The show is one of the smallest in the Biennial’s history – works by only 55 artists and collaborative teams are displayed on four floors of the museum’s ‘Breur Building’ in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. This year the entire third floor of the building has been taken dedicated video installation – first exhibited at the Biennial in 1975 – a sure sign that video work has now reached maturity, worthy of recognition as an independent art form. In addition, the museum’s fifth floor is devoted to artists in the Whitney’s permanent collection who have shown in past Biennials.

Francesco Bonami, Curator of Whitney Biennial 2010

Whitney Biennial 2010 – Interview with curator Francesco Bonami via VernissageTV

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