David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards curate “Quiet as It’s Kept”
Write poetry.
That is our best-recommended strategy to experience the Whitney Biennial. The stanza, the spaces, the rhythms, the waves. They all coalesce in the black space and the white space. And one need not keep this quiet.
The country has been in an ongoing grinding recession since 2008, heading toward depression. Institutions steadily attacked; the wealth steadily stolen. You can see the US here, in these installations, videos, paintings, sculptures, and photography.
Even when you don’t look, you see stressed-out workers balancing on a highwire, the frayed net below. The emptiness of consumerism, the backwash from decades of wars, the contemplation of chaos. Here is history and here is the future, quiet as it’s kept.
The Whitney Biennial is now 90 – an institution, possibly. Discussed, reviled, admired; this one often is stunning. Collaborative curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards have chosen quality in these 63 artists, have endeavored to know their collection of artists and can shake the viewer. Brooding, raw, slick, contemporary displacement is displayed. Frayed. Portrayed.
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