Nikita Gale Receives Whitney Biennial 2024 Bucksbaum Award

Nikita Gale b. 1983, United States Follow +

Los Angeles-based artist Nikita Gale, known for installations that explore the human connection to material culture, is the recipient of the 2024 Bucksbaum Award, presented by Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to an artist exhibiting in the Whitney Biennial.

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Gale was selected from 71 artists and collectives featured in this year's exhibition, Even Better Than the Real Thing (until 29 September 2024).

Her contribution TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME) (2023–2024) comprises a modified piano programmed to play songs in silence, exploring the space between a score and its performance.

The work seeks to examine how 'labour, performance, authorship, legibility, and sensing are beholden to their technological contexts'. Notably, it highlights the body's absence by silencing the instrument's musical functions, leaving only the sound and image of its mechanisms.

'Nikita Gale has an incredible knack for making work that is both conceptually rigorous and full of emotion, somehow disciplined and mysterious at the same time,' said Scott Rothkopf, Whitney Museum's Alice Pratt Brown Director.

'By honouring Gale with the Bucksbaum Award, we continue the Whitney's longstanding tradition of celebrating artists who demonstrate great achievement and promise for the future,' Rothkopf said.

'I am profoundly grateful to receive this award. It is a meaningful recognition of my work, and I appreciate the support and encouragement from everyone who has been a part of my journey,' Gale said.

Whitney trustee Melva Bucksbaum (1933–2015) conceived the Bucksbaum Award in 2000. The prize is presented each Biennial year in recognition of an artist who could make an impact on the history of American art.

The 2022 Bucksbaum Award was presented to American choreographer Ralph Lemon. Previous recipients include Paul Pfeiffer (2000), Mark Bradford (2006), Omer Fast (2008), Zoe Leonard (2014), Pope.L (2017), and Tiona Nekkia McClodden (2019). —[O]

Main image: Nikita Gale, TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME) (2023–2024). Exhibition view: Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (20 March–11 August 2024). Photo: Ryan Lowry.