Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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Entry Gallery, Floor 7

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Selected works from the seventh-floor entry gallery appear in this section.

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DIDDY / LAKES, 2013

Cory Arcangel (b. 1978), Diddy / Lakes, 2013. Looped digital file, media player, seventy-inch flat-screen monitor, armature, and cables, 79 × 36 1/2 × 11 in. (200.7 × 92.7 × 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Hilary and Mo Koyfman P.2015.7 © Cory Arcangel

Although this work was made in 2013, Cory Arcangel used a digital-animation tool from the 1990s (Java’s “lake” effect) to alter an image of recording artist Sean Combs–also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy–standing in front of a private jet. The first of a series of videos in which Arcangel applied this self-consciously “arty” look to photographs that might have been found on the web (others feature Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé and Jay Z), the work slyly registers the past. As in much of his art, here Arcangel manipulates outdated technology, connecting the obsolescence of this early-Internet graphic effect to the fleeting nature of celebrity.

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On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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