Dave McKenzie
Performances
Dave McKenzie’s new work, Disturbing the View, is a Whitney-commissioned performance that draws inspiration from the entrepreneurial window washers common in many American cities. McKenzie (b. 1977) choreographs a circuitous path around the Museum using the building’s facade as a canvas and obscuring individual windows. As he progresses, the artist inserts himself into the Museum’s daily rhythms, at times visible or hidden from sight, momentarily disrupting the view and prompting observers to consider essential labor that is often invisible.
This performance is accompanied by Dave McKenzie: The Story I Tell Myself, a focused presentation on the Museum’s third floor in which McKenzie’s performances for the camera and documentation of his live art are contextualized alongside works by artists who have informed the concepts, gestures, and sensibilities in his art. Together the performance commission and exhibition span twenty years of McKenzie’s creative output, illuminating both the seriousness of play in his artmaking and how he engages with and questions ideas, images, and language using his principal tool—his own body.
Disturbing the View took place from May 1 through June 12, 2021, on Friday and Saturday afternoons beginning at 1 pm. The performance was commissioned by the Whitney and organized by Adrienne Edwards, the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Curator of Performance, with Mia Matthias, curatorial assistant.
Major support is provided by the Manitou Fund.
Dave McKenzie, rehearsal of Disturbing the View, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2020. Image by Alex Munro
