Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 5

Born 1976 in Livonia, MI
Lives in Brooklyn, NY

In Dana Schutz’s painting for the Biennial, Elevator, figures are seen embroiled in a struggle, both with themselves and with larger-than-life insects, denoting a state of anxiety and alarm. The work (whose dimensions mirror those of the Museum’s large freight elevator) plays with time, as action and gesture appear suspended. Like a truncated history painting, an epic scene is glimpsed between two doors that may be closing or opening. Schutz deploys the transitional space of the elevator as a metaphor for other social spaces that are at once public and private, intimate and estranging, inviting us to consider our own position or role amid the chaos.