Curated by Henriette Huldisch & Shamim Momin
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
March 6 – June 1, 2008
Museum of Failure
A hand-engraved rear-illuminated mirror (The Collection of Impossible Subjects) depicts a museum wall hung salon style with empty frames, with one frame opening onto a trompe l’oeil painting (Invisible Self-Portrait in My Studio) based on a flash photograph of an identically installed and framed collection of mirrors reflecting the artist working on the painting. A Polaroid of the artist’s 28-year old copy of the Uffizi Gallery guide is installed nearby.
100 Visitors to the Biennial Immortalized
One hundred visitors to the Whitney Biennial each received a fifteen-minute pencil portrait in exchange for filling out an evaluation of the finished drawing. The portraits and evaluations were exhibited, scanned and the originals mailed to the participants.
To see full archive of drawings and questionnaires
On the Inevitable Failure of Restoration
A framed video installed in the Park Avenue Armory shows the artist attempting to recreate the original hand-stenciled Armory wallpaper over the current wall color only to have the painting burst into flames and burn away to reveal the wall color beneath.