I was at the Whitney Biennial earlier today an with the exception of a few works – I didn’t get much out of the experience.
I liked Pae White’s large mural/rug the best – and it was beautiful to look at close up as well as at a distance. Here’s more information about the work above.
BORN 1963 IN PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
LIVES AND WORKS IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIAIgnoring traditional boundaries between the applied and fine arts, Pae White encourages viewers to take a deeper look at familiar encounters and ordinary objects. In 2006, White began creating tapestries with photographic images of crumpled aluminum foil and plumes of smoke. Still, Untitled, one of her most recent smoke tapestries, stages what White describes as the cotton’s “dream of becoming something other than itself” by contrasting an image of something immaterial with the physicality of fabric. This vision of an ephemeral moment suspended in space—the slight and fleeting unfurling of smoke monumentality in the heroic tradition of tapestries—transforms an everyday image into a seductive evocation of transience and longing.
I find the problem I often have with modern work is that it demands my attention yet often fails to give me a convincing reason why I should grant it.
The other problem with the Whitney Biennial work I saw today was the lack of any context or suggested way of viewing the works – on one hand – all this work is demanded of the viewer – to understand what is often not much more than scribblings of the artist – meanwhile – there’s no suggested approach to viewing the works, in general.
On another note Robert Scoble wrote a post today on how the iPad is changing Art and Music. While the iPad painting application still aren’t as good as I’d like them to be, I would consider buying an iPad just for a sketchpad – see the movie below
