Photo Pest: The Stuff of Life

Even bros take advantage of free Friday nights at the Whitney. Mabel Dwight, subject of another exhibit, might have called it "the stuff of life." Her take would have been interesting.

Uncharacteristically, I downloaded an app after stepping out on to the eighth floor terrace. Nancy Baker Cahill's "Cento" allows you to customize a chimera with the twinned goal of raising environmental awareness and cooperation.

Pretty cool, even if it isn't part of the Biennial.

Nor was this attractive sculpture, who looked like he was dressed by International Male for cruising the Meatpacking District, circa 1978. I first saw I first saw Frank Benson's eerily lifelike work at the New Museum's 2015 Triennial.

"Castaway" by Frank Benson (2016)

Raven Halfmoon finally welcomed me to his year's crop of Biennial artists, using indigenous techniques that predate Christ. Her materials take on the hues of sunrises and sets. Severe thunderstorms, not so much.

Sun Twins (2023)

By the time I reached the sixth floor, this one had trapped visitors inside for nearly an hour.

Ali Eyal, born in Baghdad in between America's invasions of Iraq, left the Middle East in 2017. Violence inflects his work.

(2026)

He painted this childhood memory of a visit to a war-torn amusement park with his family.

"Look Where I Took You" (2026)

My apartment reminds me a little of Agosto Machado's work on a larger scale. Neither of us ever threw anything meaningful away and we share a fascination with color, camp and collage, although he was a self-described "street queen." While I went to college and then worked 9 to 5, he participated in the Stonewall riots and suspended his career as a performance artist to take care of friends, including Charles Ludlam and Ethyl Eichelberger, sickened by HIV.

"Downtown (Altar)" (2024)

We may have archived different worlds (Upper West Side vs. Lower East Side) but his altars and shrines resonated more than the work of any other artist in the Biennial. Machado refused to divulge his age ("A lady never tells") but I'm guessing he was about a decade older than me.

"Shrine (Green)" (2022)

Machado died shortly after the Whitney recognized his unique homage to New York's downtown scene and the people who comprised it during the AIDS era. What a way to go!

Close-up

In "Pandemonium" Michelle Lopez explores media overload. She used a tornado machine in the production of this video, projected on an enormous screen mounted to a gallery ceiling.

If you think, like I did, that this anthropomorphic painting is batshit crazy, as much circuit board as surreal environmental meditation, check out Akira Ikezoe's website. He's definitely an artist of many manifestos.

"Mole Stories Around Methane Gas" (2025)

I'm guessing Anna Tsouhlarakis prefers creating to cancelling. Here, she's spoofing "End of the Trail," a 1915 statue by James Earle Fraser, which dominates the entrance to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Neither exhaustion nor defeat come to mind in this 21st-century feminist evocation of indigenous peoples, complete with a menstrual cup foundation. You go, Navajo Nation grrl!

"SHE MUST BE A MATRIARCH" (2023)

Nice touch, curators!

I didn't much care for Andrea Fraser's colorless sculptures, which resemble toddlers trapped in the maternity ward, but she did tip off curators to the long overlooked work of her mother, now exhibited in the same gallery. Carmen de Monteflores abandoned her graphic depictions of human relations to become a psychotherapist and raise five kids when gatekeepers in the 1960s art world refused her admission.

"Man and Woman Sitting" (1968)

The platform heel floating just above the yellow platform should have been a giveaway about the origins of this sparkly showstopper by Young Joon Kwak. She cast body parts belonging to members of the queer and trans community to create a balletic sculpture suspended from the rafters, almost as if god were pulling the strings.

"Divine Dance of Soft Revolt (Anna, Travis, Me)" (2024)

"Mutual Life (38.9 years) by Cooper Jacoby (2025) and "Homo Machina (Human Machine, a.k.a. Gay Machine)" by Gabriela Ruiz (2026) evoked responses comparable to a babies reaching for mobiles above their cribs if not much else. It wasn't surprising to learn that AI assisted in the development of the first.

I wonder if Taína H. Cruz, who grew up in New York City, ever got to see 5 Pointz. It had been whitewashed by the time she turned 16.

A Wall That Plays Along (2026)

"Continuing Anyway" (2026)

"Passage" (2026) reflects the thrill and occasional fear of growing up in an urban environment, especially while skateboarding in your red heels.

Dogs can be a comfort as well as a threat.

"This Counts" (2026)

Whether creating or running, Malcolm Peacock is in it for the long haul. It took him ten months to braid this homage to a redwood tree, adorned with pages from The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas.

"Five of them were hers and she carved shelters
with windows into the backs of their skulls" (2024)

Doom and the Salem witch trials influenced these disturbing sculptures by Isabelle Frances McGuire. They reminded me how much I regret missing John Proctor Is The Villain on Broadway, which probably would have been much more in my wheelhouse.

"Satan in America and Other Invisible Evils: Experiments in

Public Sculpture (Demon, Crouch & Splay)" (2026)

Erin Jane Nelson, who lives in Sante Fe, creates ceramic works from photos. They reminded me a bit of something you might find in a gallery there. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm of the firm belief that New York museums too often ignore regional art.

Speaking of edgy, was this a colorful collection of . . . butt plugs?

"Kong Play" (2025)

Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered that Emilie Louise Gossiaux, who lost her sight as the result of a 2010 bicycle accident in Brooklyn, had replicated her recently-deceased guide dog's chew toys in ceramic. The scratchy drawings depict London; in general, the artist's work addresses the symbiotic relationship between people and animals.

"London, at the Foot of the Bed" (2025)

I won't lie: my favorite discovery at the Whitney wasn't in the Biennial. Mabel Dwight, a pre-eminent lithographer of the 30s, earned that distinction. She picked up her almost photorealistic skill after a stint in Paris.

Self-Portrait (1932)

Although Dwight trained and worked as an artist from an early age, she was a relatively late bloomer, creating these works after turning 50.

"The Clinch, Movie Theatre" (1928)

Kudos to Dan Nadel, the museum's curator of prints and drawing for mounting this terrific show. He also wrote Crumb, one of my favorite artist biographies.

"Mechano, Wonder of the World" (1928)

Dwight excelled at capturing the "stuff of life," particularly in New York City.

"El océano, Coney Island" (1928)

A socialist, she was committed to making her art affordable to the working class public that she depicted with such precision and sympathy.

"Abstract Thinking" (1932)

The thunderstorms had mostly stopped by the time I exited the Whitney, but I pretty much had the dripping, twilit High Line to myself. More work by a Biennial artist.