PRESS RELEASE

Contact:
Mary Haus, Stephen Soba, Blythe Siddall
Whitney Museum of American Art
(212) 570-3633
November 2002

WHITNEY’S FIRST EXPOSURE SERIES TO PRESENT THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY RYAN MCGINLEY

Untitled (Elevator)
Untitled (Elevator), 1999. Chromogenic color print, 40 x 30 in.
Collection of the artist; courtesy Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art, New York


Ryan McGinley makes large-scale color photographs of his friends and lovers, a group that forms part of New York’s Lower East Side youth culture. The Kids Are Alright: Photographs by Ryan McGinley, the first museum exhibition of McGinley’s work, will be presented as part of the First Exposure series in the Sondra Gilman Gallery on the Whitney’s fifth floor from February 1 to May 18, 2003.

McGinley, 25, began visiting Manhattan while in high school in New Jersey to spend time with a group of skateboarders. Photographer Larry Clark was documenting these skate kids at the time and the two became friends. After enrolling at Parsons School of Design in graphic design, McGinley took up the camera and began photographing his crowd and his lifestyle. In 1999, he produced a fifty-page book of these photographs titled The Kids Are Alright. This desktop publishing venture yielded 100 copies, which McGinley sent to the subjects of his pictures, to photographers he admired, and to art and culture magazines he read. Today, his images are frequently featured in magazines that came to know his work through his early book.

Sylvia Wolf, the Whitney’s Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography remarks, “Each new generation discovers sex, drugs, and danger as though theirs is the first to experience adventure or rebellion. Unlike many past photographs of teen culture, McGinley’s images lack irony, boredom and angst. There is a disarming delight McGinley and his subjects appear to take in their lifestyle. With images that are charged with spontaneity, candor, and exuberance, McGinley adds new energy to the genre.”

McGinley works in the tradition of photographers who focus the camera on their own generation. Nan Goldin, for instance, began chronicling her circle of friends in the early 1980s, and Wolfgang Tillmans has spent more than a decade photographing European youth. McGinley uses photography to break down barriers between public and private spheres of activity, making the sensational appear banal and drawing attention to the everyday. His subjects are willing collaborators. Drawn from skateboard, music, graffiti and gay cultures, they perform for the camera and expose themselves with a frank self-awareness that is distinctly contemporary. The camera is both a part of their lives and an accomplice in the construction of the world they wish to create for themselves. The results form a portrait of a generation that is savvy about visual culture and acutely aware of how identity can be communicated through photography.

Wolf notes, “The title of this exhibition comes from McGinley’s early self-published book and from a 1979 film documentary on the rock band The Who. This awareness of and homage to a previous generation is characteristic of McGinley. While he asserts the individuality of his own generation, he does so with an appreciation of the past.”

The Kids Are Alright: Photographs by Ryan McGinley is the second exhibition in the Whitney’s photography series First Exposure, in which photographic work by a young artist is given its first museum exposure at the Whitney. The mission of the Whitney Museum in all disciplines is to collect the finest examples of American art from the 20th and 21st centuries. In keeping with Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s own willingness to take risks on new talent, the museum also collects and exhibits work by young artists who are in the early stages of their careers. With this in mind, First Exposure was launched in 2001. Sharon Harper was the first artist to be shown in this series.

McGinley’s photographs have been featured in numerous venues in print and in galleries. Recent exhibitions include solo shows in Milan, Paris, and Toronto in the fall of 2002, and the group exhibitions “Bystander” at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Chelsea, in the summer of 2002, and “Raw: New York, New Work” in London in the spring of 2001. Magazine credits include Dazed and Confused, Vice, Index, ID, Dutch, and Butt. In addition, his photographs of the popular New York rock band The Strokes were commissioned for a feature in The New York Times Magazine in October 2002.

The Whitney Museum of American Art is the leading advocate of 20th- and 21st-century American art. Founded in 1930, the Museum’s holdings have grown to include nearly 13,000 works of art representing more than 2,000 artists. The Permanent Collection is the preeminent collection of 20th-century American art and includes the entire artistic estate of Edward Hopper, the largest public collection of works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras, as well as significant works by Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Jasper Johns, Reginald Marsh, Agnes Martin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ad Reinhardt, among other artists.


Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art:
Helen Mirra Through December 8, 2002
Sanctuaries: The Last Works of John Hejduk
Tom Burr: Deep Purple Through January 5,2003
Lorna Simpson: 31 Through January 26, 2003
Lorna Simpson: Cameos and Appearances Through January 26, 2003
An American Legacy Through January 26, 2003
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend Through March 9, 2003
Ben Rubin/Mark Hansen: Listening Post December 17, 2002–March 9, 2003
Photographs by Ryan McGinley February 1–June 1, 2003
Diller + Scofidio March 1–June 1, 2003
Elie Nadelman April 3–July 20, 2003

The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 945 Madison Avenue @ 75th Street, New York City. Museum hours are: Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; we are closed on Mondays. For information, please call 1-800 WHITNEY or visit www.whitney.org.

Upcoming Exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris:
Outer City, Inner Space Through January 3, 2003
Haluk Akakçe Through January 3, 2003
Ellen Harvey January 23–April 4, 2003