Ralph Lemon, an influential choreographer and conceptual artist, gained the Whitney Museum’s $100,000 Bucksbaum Award, which fits to at least one artist within the Whitney Biennial each time the present is held.
Lemon is finest recognized for his extremely summary—and infrequently intensely memorable—dances, which have earned him the respect of many artists and a MacArthur “genius” award. However on the Whitney Biennial, which this 12 months was curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, he shook issues up by exhibiting summary works inside the museum’s galleries.
For one of many biennial’s most idiosyncratic choices, Lemon confirmed what the Whitney described as “lots of of drawings from over or greater than 25 years in 5 transient variations that unfolded month-to-month over the course of the exhibition” held to the wall by pushpins. One work even appeared atop its wall textual content through the exhibition’s preview.
Lemon referred to those works as “a mapping akin to an anthropological observe.” He mentioned he drew on analysis carried out in Jamaica, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, and elsewhere.
Some noticed the items otherwise. Simon Wu, in his Artwork in America overview of the biennial, wrote of their weird exhibition model, “That is efficiency research’ revenge on the museum: the curators’ alternatives appear to be they’re cosplaying as artworks, embarrassed to be found like this, hanging in a museum.”
The works additionally typified the sensibility of the biennial writ massive, which recommended an unlikely resurgence of summary portray, whilst a market-driven craze for figuration is in full impact.
In keeping with Whitney, winners of the Bucksbaum Award are named in recognition of their “lasting affect on the historical past of American artwork, primarily based on the excellence of their previous work, in addition to of their current work within the Biennial.”
Scott Rothkopf, chief curator of the Whitney, mentioned in an announcement, “His physique of labor has shifted paradigms round efficiency, sculpture, drawing, and extra, in addition to the distinctions amongst them—all with rigor, ethics, humor, and coronary heart.”