A 4 week-old baby reviews the Whitney Biennial

She slept through the almost the whole thing*. Until we walked into the Cecily Brown gallery, when she started screaming at the top of her lungs. On this advice, we cut our visit short, leaving via the elevator so as not to disrupt the Julianne Swartz sound installation in the stairway.) * Truthfully, she also shattered the misty calm of the Gran Canaria forest in Craigie Horsfeld's video room with a post-bottle burp worthy of a trucker....
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Venice: Vidi, Bitchy

The Venice Biennale is finally over open, and not a day too soon. For a bunch of whiny Americans, anyway. In the Times, Carol Vogel complains about having to see art "amid relentless heat intensified by the power needed for lighting and video installations." Meanwhile, artnet's Walter Robinson, an apparent Venice virgin, complains about having to see art in "some historic buildings," the heat and the dearth of video. [After the massive sucking sound that was 2001's video choices, less...
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Utopia Station

Utopia Station is a project opening at the Venice Biennale, curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. In Venice, there's a space, a Station, designed by Tiravanija and Liam Gillick, which will host a series of programs, performances, whatever, around the insistent reimagining of Utopia. Some friends, Michael & Ingar (aka Elmgreen & Dragset) emailed a heads up for their ongoing performance (today until the 15th), and it seems Agnès Varda will be stationed at the...
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One Million Years (Future), on MP3

Last year, I wrote about the utterly moving experience of On Kawara's work, One Million Years (Past) at Documenta XI. Now, I find the brilliant art site, ubu has put out a 73-minute excerpt of One Million Years (Future) in mp3. (Heads up: it's 105Mb.) On Kawara @ Dia, 1993, photo: Cathy Carver, image: diacenter.org Originally intoned for the first time in an exhibition at Dia in 1993, "with the CD the amount of time is limited, 74 minutes...
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How the Village Voice agrees with me (generally) on Documenta 11

It may be a little overwrought ("So let's receive this Documenta as the proclamation of a state of emergency."), but Kim Levin's Village Voice review of Documenta 11 is pretty right on. I mean, she generally agrees with me, reinforcing my own innate sense of astuteness and acuity. Be afraid. Be very afraid....
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Peter Schjeldahl reviews Documenta 11

Peter Schjeldahl reviews Documenta 11 in this week's New Yorker. He snidely and wearily compliments the show for its "robust, mature...festivalism," which I take to mean they figured out how to show video-based works. But he at least notices two of my Documenta favorites. On Amar Kanwar's documentary: "a stunning exploration of the Pakistani-Indian military frontier in Kashmir...[and] skillful, alluring, and notably uncomplaining." (Gee, sorry to disappoint you, Peter.) On Gabriel Orozco's terra cotta bowls: the "always witty" artist's "work's...
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Still in Kassel, at

Still in Kassel, at least mentally. The bad news first: Michael Kimmelman's embarassing writeup of Documenta 11 in todays NYTimes is not only self-contradictory, but almost every complaint or criticism he makes of the show can be refuted by the contents of the show itself. Maybe it's telling that we approached the show from different angles, literally. He arrived via Cologne, where the Matthew Barney show just opened, and so he supposes that Barney's work is "just what Documenta...
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Setting: Fredericianum, Documenta 11, Kassel,

Setting: Fredericianum, Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany The voice of a woman reading from within a freestanding glass booth echos through the gallery: Nine hundred eighty eight thousand four hundred and twelve. B.C. You watch, slightly amused. A set of black binders in a vitrine bear the title, One Million Years (Past and Future). One binder is open, showing columns of numbers, years. A couple enters the gallery and stops right in front of the booth. If it were the window...
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Report from Kassel: Got back

Report from Kassel: Got back Saturday, after an ultimately successful and fulfilling trip, but with entirely too much driving. Friday afternoon, the Documenta technical office installed a new monitor in the Ashkin piece, calibrated the timing of the three monitors, and started it up again--all under the watchful eyes of Okwui Enwezor, Carlos Basualdo, and myself. (It turns out the Ashkin was the only piece in the entire show not visible on Thursday, so it would've been a priority for...
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KASSEL - A mammoth contemporary

KASSEL - A mammoth contemporary art exhibition. First things first: Documenta 11 is at least an order of magnitude better than last year's Venice Bienale, and not just because it's not so freakin' hot. While pursuing some gratuitous VIP ego-stroking (I'd just come from Basel, what do you expect?), I wandered into the Documenta Lounge, where I met Okwui Enwezor, curator-for-life and the suavest guy in town. [As of today, the catalog's not on Amazon, but these "Documenta" books are.]...
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BASEL - A mammoth contemporary

BASEL - A mammoth contemporary art fair. A pleasant scattering of familiar faces and new (and old) work by favorite artists. And tons of work by artists I don't really care for. A surprise DJ/friend from NYC turning up at a gallery dinner/party. Drivng down the tram-only lanes of the road, thereby frightening my euro passengers nearly to death. A great crew from the uber-art magazine, Frieze. Getting magazines --not just flyers--under the windshield wipers of my car. Favorite cover...
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