The NYTimes on the relationship between the Met Museum and its new acquisition of the Marcel Breuer building, home to the Whitney Museum of Art [AO Newslink]

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Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (aka Beat the Champ) (2011), all images via The Whitney
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Currently showing at The Whitney is “Pro Tools,” the first major retrospective of Brooklyn-based Cory Arcangel. The show surveys a diverse set of works that display a focused obsession with both outdated technology and pop culture.  The exhibition’s title refers to a software that is used in sound mixing, and becomes a synecdoche for the way in which tools and trends allow culture to move forward, but in doing so render themselves obsolete.

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Cory Arcangel, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (aka Beat the Champ) (2011) (detail)

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Tauba Auerbach, Quarry, ‘Whitney On-Site: New Commissions, 2010.’ Photograph by Danielle Canter, via The Whitney.

Currently on view at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington streets is Tauba Auerbach‘s Quarry; an installation at the South-end of the High Line, where the Whitney Museum expects to open their downtown branch in 2015.  The exhibit, which runs from July 18 though August 29, 2010, is the second installment of the three-part series ‘Whitney On-Site: New Commissions,’ a project anticipating the start of construction on the museum’s new building, currently scheduled for next Spring.

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Arena #7 (Bears), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

Mike Kelley‘s  current exhibition at the Skarstedt Gallery features seven works from his Arena sculpture series.  Using found objects, both handmade and machine fabricated, and stuffed animals, Kelley creates “arenas,” scenes crafted to evoke curiosity from his observers.  Kelley works on the floor, as a playing child might, with afghans and blankets of varying styles and motifs.  Kelley explores the commodification of toys and their relevant emotions, removing them from a typical, nostalgic setting to create arenas that highlight both consumeristic natures and artistic projections.

Arena #10 (Dogs), Mike Kelley, image via the Skarstedt Gallery

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Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View All images via Hauser and Wirth unless otherwise noted

Currently showing at Hauser and Wirth Gallery, 32 East 69 St., New York, NY is “MONALISA”, an exhibition of works by an American artist  Ida Applebroog. The present exhibition is a debut of the entirely new body of work, with a centerpiece of a rudimentary wooden structure that the artist’s calls “MONALISA’s House”. The structure’s walls are covered by one hundred drawings of the artist’s genitals that she produced in the seclusion of her bathroom, while living in California in 1969. The artist speaks about her work: “It was a certain period of my life and before I got into the tub I’d sit with a full-length mirror on the floor. It was before my own radicalization.”

Ida Applebroog’ s ‘MONALISA” 2009 Installation View

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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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