Front Room of the Whitney Biennial- A Room to Die For

The highlight of the Whitney: Urs Fischer and Rudolf Stingel. This is the front room as you enter the biennial on the fourth floor. There was a wonderful sense of dialogue between the two artists' work. Urs Fischer had cut giant holes in two sides of the white walls of the gallery, showing the aluminum structured interior of the walls. Cut with a saws-all, the irregularity of the holes and their scale completely redefined the modernist white cube experience one resentfully has come to expect. One steps over and through the giant cavities with an understanding that you're not viewing an isolated art object but actually moving through it. Inside the gallery Fischer had two revolving cast aluminum branches spinning arcs just above the floor. The votive candles at the end of each branched-radius applied evidence of time past on the floor. Wax Residue on floor= Past. Burning Flame + Orbiting Branches= Present. Waxed Candle in Proximity of Flame= Future. The palette of the room was grisaille. Silver, Blacks, Whites. Rudolf Stingel's giant painting first appears as a photograph. Up close one sees that it is painting. The reserve and determination of the piece is astounding. Thousands of strokes of paint on brush under a will of a desired outcome.
Seen up-close and from the left side of the piece, the weight of the arm on the bed has that of a fallen idol. The 19th Century Painter, Ingres, could give tremendous weight to an arm through the languid pose of the figure.


Through scale and foreshortening, Stingel gives a strong sense of gravity to his piece. Fischer's dripping candles reiterate that gravity and reference another tie between the two artists- Gerhard Richter.

The votive quality of Fischer's piece and the Richter-like photographic quality of the Stingel's link well. Both artists' work has a force through monumentality, but in both there is nuance and insight. The weight and force is refined and directed. This is a room to die for.