Highlighting the Whitney Biennial: Rashaad Newsome
Slinging back happy hour margaritas at Pianos a few weeks ago, James Woodward and I reviewed our impressions of the 2010 Whitney Biennial. We discovered that piece we both remembered most vividly is Rashaad Newsome’s Untitled (New Way), 2009. As the first installment of NEW PROVINCIALISM - 1 ARTwork / 2 curators, James and I decided to write our impressions of one of our favorite works in this years Biennial.
First up- James Woodward:
Rashaad Newsome’s videos are fresh, accessible and exciting. Using the most autonomous agency available to artists—the body—he crafted two videos that indulge in rhythm, movement and meditation, a surprising feat considering there is no audio component to the works.
We have all seen Paris Is Burning the 1990 documentary chronicling New York drag ball culture, but I doubt any of us have ever watched it muted. The documentary offers a peak into a thriving subculture of vogueing drag queens, replete with sparkle, drama and flare and characteristic of a unique NYC social and cultural history. In Newsome’s videos, bodies are stripped of their environment, their dancing now contextualized to white walls of what appears to be a gallery; no longer does the audience consists of a live, downtown, ‘in-the-know’ crowd, but an institutional audience of art enthusiasts and appreciators.
Newsome asks us to provide the soundtrack in our heads, music to help us understand the flow of these dancing contortionists. Do they move on intuition? Do they have instruction? Why are they dancing and when will they stop? Movements are no longer defined by a pulsing song, where ups and downs, pauses and breaks make sense of physical forms and manifest narratives for the body to understand; Newsome now deposits his viewer into a world of abstraction, introspection and self-reflection.
The piece recalls my middle school years of practicing Madonna’s Vogue in the mirror; excited after hitting more than three moves in succession, I tirelessly repeated track #15 from her Immaculate Collection. Newsome’s work is instantaneously familiar, welcoming and inviting. Although not always bringing about the best of adolescent memories, it certainly finds commonalities amongst artist and viewer. In this sense, Newsome has confronted pre-existing conditions and stereotypes, asking us to reevaluate certain notions and histories and in doing so help us further grasp our own identity. Questions of gender, sexuality and the physical form all come into play, incarnated in familiar and even personal forms for the viewer.
Newsome doesn’t ask you to understand or reach any conclusion as to what’s transpiring in the works, he is simply asking for your participation. How can you not? The works may have only consisted of moving bodies and a white wall but the volume is cranked to each individual’s taste and liking.
Tali Wertheimer:
In Untitled (New Way) 2009, Rashaad Newsome presents video footage and documentation of Voguing. Although there is fluid movement throughout the 6:28 film, there is no sound. The room is empty, save for the dancer, and all movement takes place under the microscope of the white-wall space.
I have moved apartments ten times in the last seven years. Walking into an empty NYC apartment always fills me with the same feeling of dread- how will my body occupy this empty space? How can I translate myself into all this emptiness? Will I be stuck living in this void or will my presence, my movements, manage to expel the overbearing silence? While documenting a cultural phenomenon, Newsome’s video also addresses the common experience of crafting personal identity.
The backdrop of the dancer is the white-cube gallery. By removing the Vogue dancer from his traditional setting and inserting him into the white-cube gallery of Fine Art, Rashaad Newsome pushes the viewer to legitimatize the artistic value of the marginalized craft. At the same time, the viewer is forced to make eye-contact with the dancer, and physically relate to the images on the projector. The viewers body becomes linked with the video, and he begins to feel himself Voguing, perhaps for the first time.
Rashaad Newome’s documentary video forces us to step inside a cultural movement. And by actually stepping into another persons shoes the viewer experiences the elation of abstract movement. The artist commented that for him the dancer is his pen, and his bodies movements are strokes. Following that logic, watching Untitled, 2009 allows us to take the role of paint on the painters brush.
James Woodward is an artist/curator who has been included in exhibitions at the Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Queens Museum of Art, New York; The Maysles Institute, New York; Derek Eller Gallery, New York and has had work screened at the New Art Dealer’s Alliance (ADAA) Fair in Miami.
Tali Wertheimer is a writer/curator based in New York City. She is currently working on Younger Than Moses: emerging artists show,opening August 7, 2010 at Benrimon Contemporary. She is also finishing her first book of short stories “Not Committed Yet” chronicling the lives and loves of bat-shit crazy New Yorkers.
- May 11 2010 | - Read More →
