Peachy the Magazine April May 2014 | Page 105

ART + ARCHITECTURE final Biennial in the Breuer building as the Whitney decamps to its new Renzo Piano-designed home in the Meatpacking District next year, perhaps more suitable terroir for a contemporary museum than the buttoned-up upper east side. Fittingly, there is a piece in this year’s Biennial which serves as an homage of sorts to the Breuer ziggurat. On the fourth floor, in a large windowed gallery, Zoe Leonard has created a capacious camera obscura using the museum’s signature trapezoidal window with its panorama of tony Madison Avenue as a prismatic lens. The window is covered save for a small hole which inverts the exterior scene and casts the image of the up-ended tableau onto the opposing wall of the gallery. One enters the dim space as the streetscape is projected on its head with traffic racing across the gallery ceiling, shoppers madly rushing topsyturvy, and rooftops of brownstones skimming the floor. ABOVE, TOP : Photo of current building by Jerry L. Thompson. ABOVE, BOTTOM : Rendering of the new building, view from the High Line. Courtesy Whitney Museum. Zoe Leonard, 945 Madison Avenue, 2014. Installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Collection of the artist; courtesy Murray Guy, New York; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. APRIL MAY 2014 103