Art: Sadie Benning: Play Pause @ Whitney

Play Pause (2006), a two channel thirty-minute video projection of works on gouache paper spanning from 2001-2006, is Sadie Benning's first solo museum exhibit in New York. Directed in collaboration with Solveig Nelson, Play Pause is laced with base-pounding electronic house music (of her own creation) that spews out from a pitch-black room. With poignant childlike-colorful animations Benning captures a harsh city, sexual awakening, loss and glimpses of the everyday life and world that she finds herself in; the New York Times describes her new work as "animating the everyday sublime." Although, not marked by virtuosity in basic artistic technique (and thankfully so!) Benning's work is daring and experimental, and seeks to wrestle with complex issues--mostly autobiographical-- such as identity, as well as finding the evanescent glimpses of beauty in the ordinary.