Five From the Whitney Biennial: Martin Kersels

"This is a funny guy" was the this unsolicited comment offered to me by a visitor to the Whitney Biennial as he contemplated 5 Songs, the sculpture-cum-performance set by Martin Kersels, installed in the museum's lobby. A miniature stage composed of five orange, black and white movable modules, the piece emanates a sense of hedonist pleasure realized through glam-on-a-budget fantasy. The modules include a Laugh-In worthy dance cage replete with a few hanging beads, and a performance platform with a built in prop room, stocked with all manner of rock accoutrements, including fright wigs and (should the need arise) a lint roller. The overall effect is Minimalist sculpture hijacked by a 1980s heavy metal cover band—artistic paternity in the hands of someone who can take a joke.

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Five From the Whitney Biennial: Jesse Aron Green

How does a young artist without gallery representation show work in the Whitney Biennial? Visitors to the show certainly love an unknown pleasure—Ryan Trecartin's inclusion in the 2006 Biennial was lauded for its Lana Turner in a drugstore-style story of discovery. Jesse Aron Green's artwork couldn't be less similar, in look or concept, to Trecartin's. Having been given a solo show at the Tate Modern in 2008, Green isn't exactly the exhibition's dark horse—if there is such a thing. Nevertheless, by producing a formally and conceptually rigorous video piece that interrogates art history, psychoanalysis, and structural film he could be  one of the Biennial's more ambitious inclusions—and a find for those who aren't familiar with his work.
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Five From the Whitney Biennial: Lorraine O'Grady

"There are lots of twists to me, because I'm not like your usual artist," (under-)stated Conceptual performance and visual artist Lorraine O'Grady last week. Born in Boston, the 75-year-old O'Grady (she looks and acts like an incredibly bright, beautiful person half her age) has never been comfortable in the white box, leading instead a life in pursuit of new forms of knowledge. An economics major at Wellesley, she studied postgraduate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop; then she was a rock critic, before becoming a theorist of feminism and race. Shes says her most important contribution to feminism is not art, it's a 1992/94 article on the black female body in art, "Olympia's Maid," a classic in Women's Studies programs. A daughter of West Indian émigrés, O'Grady was herself a teenage mom ("I got pregnant and married, in that order")—almost 30 years and myriad identity incarnations later, she became an uncompromising artist with a resolutely political practice. And, some 30 years from that point, her work is finally being celebrated in earnest: following her conclusion in 2007's WACK show, she was selected for the 2010 Whitney Biennial.

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Five From the Whitney Biennial: Babette Mangolte

The career of French artist and cinematographer Babette Mangolte, who moved to New York in 1970 and has resided here ever since, is a template for longevity by means of hard work, good friends, autonomy and iconoclasm. Almost immediately upon arriving to New York, Mangolte began to document—with film and still photography—the performance works of artists/choreographers including Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and Robert Morris. Mangolte used her training in cinematography and filmmaking, and, more importantly, her unique understanding of experimental performance, to record seminal works, including Brown's 1973 dance performance Roof Piece, which took place on a series of roofs in New York City. Since that time, Mangolte has divided her career pursuits between cinematography, experimental film, video, photography and installation. Her own humble, intellectual, multi-faceted artistic practice has been honored in this year's Whitney Biennial, where her contribution (an installation that involves still photography and film) spans and builds on her unique career.
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