Installation view of Whitney Biennial, with Sam Lewitt, Fluid Employment, 2012; ferromagnetic liquid poured bi-weekly over plastic.

2012 Whitney Biennial

New York

Whitney Museum of American Art

The 2012 Whitney Biennial was a modest affair. Whether by choice or necessity, this economy of means resulted in a refreshingly accessible exhibition with a personal, DIY aesthetic, one that acknowledged the downsized ambitions and reduced funding of the Great Recession while remaining intent on taking the pulse of the contemporary art world. With selected artists numbering around 50, curators Elizabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders accented the hybrid, collective, and expanded parameters of current art practice by including performance, dance, and theater along with installations, painting, and sculpture. Dissolving boundaries between mediums, exhibition spaces, artists, and the public, the biennial became a container for the uncontainable. …see the entire review in the print version of January/February’s Sculpture magazine.