If things don’t work out between Matthew Barney and Björk, artistically or otherwise, I have a suggested replacement - French artist Pierre Huyghe (for either one of them). He certainly shares their interest in journeys by boat to faraway places.
I stopped by the Whitney Museum today for a second look at the Biennial because I missed Pierre Huyghe's film on my first visit. I don’t know how – it was right there on the first floor, to the left of the elevators. I worked at the Whitney back in 1993, during the infamous 1993 Whitney Biennial. Thirteen years later, I still recognize the security guards and the elderly volunteers at the membership desk. (Rumor had it that the security guards, who belong to a union, earned more than the curators.) When I learned that the receptionist for the administrative offices had a Master’s degree in art history, I more or less gave up on a career in the arts.
A Journey That Wasn't was filmed in two parts – one in Antarctica, where Huyghe chartered a boat to find a remote island and the solitary albino penguin, and one in Central Park, where he recreated the Antarctica trip at Wollman Rink. This description sounds strange, but it seemed to make perfect sense when I saw it. The two parts are intercut to the accompaniment of a symphonic orchestra, and the effect is romantic and ominous. The polar landscape is stunning and forbidding, and yet the trip’s retelling, against a Manhattan backdrop and with an audience, seems equally menacing. The Central Park performance, in turn, makes Antarctica seem like a theater, a stage for the penguins and the intrepid human travelers.
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