I’m Not Hater: Werner Herzog at the Whitney Biennial 2012

I missed the Whitney Biennial 2012 opening (due to a cold), and feel bad about that.

I would have loved to have seen it: I’m not a Biennial Hater afterall.  Rather, I like to keep an open mind and tiptoe around during the off hours.  One thing that sounds interesting is a mesmerizing music video by Werner Herzog’s Hearsay of the Soul (see Emily Nathan’s artnet review).  Another, also a filmmaker: undergrounder George Kuchar.

This 2012 Biennial features works by 51 artists working in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, dance, and performance, but heavy on the performance.  Elisabeth Sussman (co-organizer of the 1993 Whitney Biennial), the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney, and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator and writer who has spent the past ten years working both in the gallery world (notably Greene Naftali)  and on independent curatorial projects, where the curators this time around.

Perhaps its wrong to single out a few of the show’s artists, but some like Jutta Koether, Kai Althoff, Andrea Fraser, and Nicole Eisenman sound familar–very familar, as in a few Biennials ago.  With the plethora of art fairs and contemporary auctions, the artworld goes into overdrive.