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What Rachel Needs to Know

Review
Rachel Whiteread: Biography
Luhring Augustine Gallery
thru 4/1/06

• When Marcel Duchamp was approached by an interested buyer about his bicycle wheel readymade, he replied “go make one yourself”. So whether she’s restating that Duchamp line, reviving Warhol’s commentary, has run out of ideas before a scheduled show, or is just coasting because she can… we can now see what Whiteread really is: a girl who fills boxes with plaster.
  (see full review)

"Gimmick"

Review

Thomas Hirschhorn: Superficial Engagement
Barbara Gladstone Gallery
thru 2/11/06

Jean-Luc Blanc: Any Minute Now
Envoy Gallery
thru 2/25/06

• Before “statement” and “expression” there is “attention span”. To cheat this principle by somehow going outside the work itself to draw someone TO the work only emphasizes the question of why the work can’t do that for itself.
  
  Hirschhorn obviously wants to be written up for the “horrifying” and “shocking” show at the Gladstone Gallery because his “art” lacks the power to do so alone. Blanc obviously wants to be written up for the “creativity” and “humor” of the show at Envoy because his paintings certainly won’t be. If you disgust, you must captivate. If you use whimsy to pull me in, there better be something for me when I get there. Hopefully my review of the two shows here in a blog of a 3 reader circulation will have satisfied the goals of both these so-called “artists” and they can simply move on.(see full review)
  

The Trouble with Tuttle

Review
Richard Tuttle
The Whitney Museum of American Art
thru 2/5/06

• All this to say that I’m going back to The Whitney. I refuse to miss any additional opportunity to see a retrospective of someone who may eventually be one of my favorite artists of all time simply because I currently think he’s talentless.(see full review)