Whitney Biennial 2004

Yesterday was a wonderful day to be in New York City. After a warm, sunny walk through Central Park (you can rent small remote control sailboats at the Conservatory Water!), we went over to the Whitney to take in the 2004 Biennial. While I didn’t like many of the individual pieces, the show as a whole was worth seeing, if only to check the pulse of the contemporary art world.

I’d love to point you at some of the pieces I enjoyed, but of course the Biennial Web site is in Flash, rendering individual artist biographies and artworks unlinkable. I know artists have a fear of functionality, but you’d think they could make an exception in this case. Anyway, I dug up a link to one of my favorite pieces from the show, Hamburger Hill by Barnaby Furnas. The bullets tear his Civil War-inspired paintings apart in straight lines — looks just a bit cubist to me — flattening several minutes of action into one still frame. Wonderfully active, vibrant, and visceral.