This year the Whitney has produced videos featuring many of the artists included in the Biennial which is currently on view. The videos are well produced, unlike 90% of the video you will find on the arts. No shaky-cam here and the subjects are actually lit pretty well. The audio is good too, the biggest short fall in most amateur video.
The exhibition itself is less noisy than I expected. It appears to me like the artists were used as pieces of furniture to arrange and to make a nice room display by the curators and exhibition designers. Maybe this is why most of the works don't have much impact, that might disrupt or compete with the rest of the room display. Then there is the fact that there is so much derivative work by these mostly young artists that it makes you wonder if they don't know that they are copying or they think that being original isn't important at all. Jerry Saltz has a very good piece on artnet on this topic called Wasted Youth.
When Cool Turns Cold, Jerry Saltz on the Whitney Biennial 2008.
Above, a still from the video on sculptor Jedediah Caesar from the Whitney's Focus series.
