The curators are interested in what's out there, as long as it's not too hot or controversial. Conservative to the core, they cut an unusually nerveless path through a safe center. They forget that there is no concept more at odds with art than fairness. One of the best things about this show is how impeccably it's installed. With ample real estate given over to walk-in video installations, but for a bottleneck or two, there's a space for everything.
Nothing is too messy.
Only Sarah Sze's startling, swirling double helix of a sculpture, which springs out of the Whitney's trapezoidal cyclops window, seems untamed and out of control. Made of ladders, lights, mirrors, magnifying glasses, toothpicks and thingamajigs, this untitled work, whose details have details, occupies space in a ravenous and forceful way. In contrast to Sze's unpredictability, or the three pieces by Robert Gober that show this supremely strange artist going in stranger directions still, E.V. Day's exploded dress in the lobby is a one-liner. Similarly, Tara Donovan's ripple-effect floor piece, made of a zillion snippets of cut electric cable, looks refined, but too much like generic installation art. And Rina Banerjee's elegant mixed-media wall piece isn't much better.