One of the youngest artists and brightest stars in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Aurel Schmidt describes herself as “a drawer, socialite, and erotic photographer.” Best known for her meticulous Goth drawings of figures and faces made from cigarette butts, maggots, condom-covered fruits and vegetables, and rolled-up dollar bills, Schmidt is a nonconformist who would rather start her own movement than join the trendy pack. Born and raised in Kamloops, Canada, which she recalls as “a white-trash small town, where everyone did crystal meth and everyone was a ‘wigger,’” the self-taught Schmidt has quickly turned herself into an artist worthy of attention.
One-man interdisciplinary mash-up Rodney Graham tackles photography, filmmaking, acting, and music as elements of his artistic practice.
The Vancouver-based artist has shown all over the world, in galleries from Chicago to Mexico City, and in blockbuster exhibitions at MOCA and the Whitney Biennial. He’s also known for the occasional intimate club performance. But it’s not just genres Graham splices together; a master of lush production values, he’s capable of communicating compelling, comedic, and politically salient messages with a single charismatic gesture.
Documenting artists, snowboarders, musicians, and skateboarders, photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos takes a lively, anthropological approach to art.
Starting out in NYC’s downtown art and music scene, Marcopoulos got insider shots of Warhol, Haring, and Basquiat, as well as LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Discovering skateboard culture, he captured the dynamism of that world, before heading west to turn his lens on the developing snowboard scene and his own growing family.
The Whitney Biennial opened with a big bang on Tuesday night. Despite the pouring rain, artists, critics, curators, and collectors waited in long lines to enter the museum and then lingered for hours to view six floors of contemporary art from the past few years. Without a theme, and simply titled 2010, the succinct survey show, organized by guest curator Francesco Bonami and Whitney associate curator Gary Carrion-Murayari, features work in a variety of media by 55 artists, which is far fewer than the number selected for the esteemed exhibition over the past two decades.
Come one, come all, bring your trash heaps and postmodern conceptualism under the big top of the Whitney Biennial 2010. Edited down to 55 artists from the 2008 version’s “sprawling” 81, the exhibition includes a lot of photography, a strong showing of paintings, and a majority of women. (Yes.) Curator Francesco Bonami — with the help of Whitney senior curatorial assistant Gary Carrion-Murayari — has chosen not to tease out any particular theme, instead concentrating on what “represents the range of ideas and materials American artists are now working with.”
As it happens, Charles Isherwood pointed out in a New York Times column last week that past Olympiads also included honors for the arts — specifically architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature. Applying a similar rubric to a bright and shiny Biennial, we picked a selection of competitors* with the stuff for gold medals. Winners after the jump.
In the first installment of an ongoing series, we’re teaming up with our pals at Daily Serving, a website with its finger on the pulse of what’s hot in the world of contemporary art. An international forum combining an academic viewpoint (founder Seth Curcio is the former director of Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC) with fine art eye candy, Daily Serving is a must-read for artheads looking to expand their knowledge of the field. Our excerpt of their recent interview with Whitney Biennial artist Storm Tharp, after the jump.
Indie-music cult figure and recent art-world discovery Daniel Johnston is a complex outsider artist, haunted by lost loves and fears of Satan.
Often described as a genius, Johnston has a manic-depressive history that has landed him spots on MTV and college radio, in gallery exhibitions and the Whitney Biennial, yet most repeatedly in mental institutions. The artist was the subject of a 2006 documentary, and more recently, a Rizzoli monograph and an offbeat new iPhone app.
