Forget Art Basel’s banana: The Whitney just put a whole grocery’s worth of produce on display.
Billed as “fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad,” Darren Bader’s otherwise untitled, edible exhibition debuted Wednesday to museumgoers, some of whom giggled as they first saw it on the eighth-floor gallery.
There, arrayed in neat rows — eight across, five down — were 40 wooden pedestals, each holding a different fruit or vegetable: a stalk of corn on one, a wrinkly avocado on another.
Among some three dozen more, of varying ripeness and perfection, were a bunch of bruised bananas, two neat rows of cherry tomatoes, a frilly fennel bulb and the Johnny Wadd of hot-house cucumbers.
There are no ropes or glass between you and the produce, so you can get as close to it as you like. Just don’t squeeze or touch anything, tempting as it is — especially if you’ve never seen a dragon fruit before.
While the fruit and vegetables on display varies, the Whitney’s Christie Mitchell says, you’ll always find a mix of the ordinary and the exotic.
“Darren’s instructions guide you, but they don’t specify anything particular,” she says. “He’s interested in a balance between fruits and vegetables, and as many varieties as possible.”
One of the museum’s art handlers buys the goods from Fresh Direct and the Manhattan Fruit Exchange at Chelsea Market. Every two days, all the produce is replaced, its predecessors made into salad.
Staff members wash, slice and dice it all up on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sunday afternoons and Friday evenings, their labors projected in real time on a gallery wall. Free samples are distributed to anyone who cares to try them.
“We had a dress rehearsal Tuesday,” says Mitchell, plucking a price tag off a pomegranate. “It was delicious!”
The project is not a response to artist Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 banana, which was the sensation of Miami’s Art Basel show last year, as Bader sold the concept to the museum five years ago.
It has never shown it till now. Earlier, smaller incarnations previously popped up at MoMA’s PS 1 and elsewhere.
But what does it mean? The artist isn’t saying, but curator Mitchell ventures that it’s “funny and serious at the same time. It’s about context and appreciating produce for what it is — and it’s beautiful.”
Opening-day reviews were good. “We were intrigued by that banana at Art Basel,” says Sam Buchbauer, a recent law grad who saw the show with a friend. “Now we get to see a whole grocery!”
Added Nicola Boxall, a potter from Connecticut: “It’s beautiful. I’m just sorry we’re not going to be here for the salad.”
"Banana" - Google News
January 16, 2020 at 05:37AM
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Whitney one-ups Art Basel banana with entire modern art fruit stand - New York Post
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