Whitney Biennial by the Numbers

NEW YORK—With so much emphasis on the market these days, deciphering the art world can seem like a numbers game. But this week, in anticipation of the much-heralded 2008 Whitney Biennial, we decided to put our number-crunching abilities to a more amusing use: divvying up the artists represented in the exhibition, which runs March 6 to June 1, by demographics.

Along the way we discovered some radical numbers, too. For example, out of the 81 artists represented, three have used live animals in their work at one time or another, including Venezuelan-born Javier Tellez, who made a video, Games Are Forbidden in the Labyrinth, in which he asked blind people to touch an elephant. Another three have used baking ingredients in their work, including Mika Rottenberg, who did a piece called Dough, a large-scale video installation involving huge amounts of—what else?—dough. And performance artist and rock musician Kembra Pfahler of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black staged a piece that involved cracking eggs on her own nether regions. Yikes!

Here are some other stats ARTINFO found:

Ages:
70 or older: 2
60–69: 4
50–59: 9
40–49: 19
30–39: 49
20–29: 1

Dead artists: 1

Sex:
Male: 48
Female: 35

Where they live:
New York: 43
Los Angeles: 30
Other: 14

Where they were born:
East Coast of the U.S.: 24
West Coast of the U.S.: 21
Somewhere in the middle of the U.S.: 18
Europe: 10
Other: 8

Artists who have gallery representation: 53

Artists who have sold at auction: 23

Mediums:
Multiple disciplines: 43
Sculpture and/or installation: 11
Film and video: 9
“New media” or conceptual/event-based work: 8
Painting: 6
Sound: 4
Photography: 3

Artists whose work has involved human hair: 1

Artists whose work has involved artificial hair: 1

Female artists who have the same name as a hair stylist or regional news anchor: 2

Male artists who have the same name as a politician, U.S. Army General, or pro athlete: 7

Artists who studied Law at Yale: 1

* How we did the math: Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR) was not included in our tally, because as a collective of self-declared guerrilla broadcasters, the group is too far-reaching to be deciphered for specific categories. The neo-primitivist music group Gang Gang Dance was included as a resident of New York, but, being a diverse and nebulous force, was not included in the rest of the count. Dexter Sinister, the compound name of artists Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt, is an independent print-production group. They were counted as one person.

As in previous years, this year’s biennial features the work of several artist teams. Amy Granat and Drew Heitzler, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, and Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn were each counted as an individual artist.

Two biennial artists are accompanied by performance groups: Kembra Pfahler/The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and Mika Tajima/New Humans. For this article, information was gathered for named artists only, not their groups.

** Additional reporting by Jacquelyn Lewis and Allen Strouse