Lionel Maunz’s “Fertilize My Mouth” emphasizes feeling of absence at “Greater New York ”show at MoMA PS1 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Thursday – Monday through March 7, suggested donation $5-$10 (free with MoMA ticket within fourteen days of MoMA visit), 12 noon – 6:00 pm
718-784-2084
momaps1.org
The fourth iteration of MoMA PS1’s quinquennial exhibition, “Greater New York,” is very much about absence and presence, what is not there as well as what is. Instead of focusing primarily on up-and-coming artists, curators Peter Eleey, Douglas Crimp, Thomas J. Lax, Mia Locks, Mark Beasley, and Jenny Schlenzka have included works by nearly 150 artists, more than 60 of whom are over 50 (or would have been if they were still alive), resulting in a wide-ranging look at how New York City and the art market have changed over the last generations. James Nares’s 1976 Super 8 video “Pendulum” shows a wrecking ball ominously swinging in an empty Tribeca alley but not actually knocking anything down — yet. Amy Brener encases such found objects as watches, motherboards, and calculators into colorful resin, foam, glass, and plaster sculptures that harken back to a long-gone era. Alvin Baltrop’s silver gelatin prints remind us what the piers were like prior to renovation and gentrification and what gay life was like before AIDS. Liene Bosquê uses found souvenirs from around the world to construct imaginary cities in “Recollection.” Henry Flynt’s SAMO© Graffiti Portfolio photographs from 1979 reintroduce us to Jean-Michel Basquiat. A large gallery of lifelike sculptures by Tony Matelli, Elizabeth Jaeger, John Ahearn, Judith Shea, and others create a false sense of reality and investigate the human figure and physical relationships. Joy Episalla’s photos of motel bedrooms reflected in television sets fill viewers with personal memories. Fierce Pussy’s “For the Record” features backward text about the AIDS crisis, repeating such sentences as “he would be at this opening if she were alive today” (sic).
Amy Brener repurposes found items into memory sculptures at “Greater New York ”show at MoMA PS1 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Glenn Ligon’s silkscreened “Housing in New York: A Brief History” details the various places he lived between 1960 and 2007 and reveal how the neighborhoods changed. In the boiler room, Lionel Maunz’s cast iron and concrete “Fertilize My Mouth” consists of a pair of disembodied legs standing in front of a tilted slab of concrete on which something bad appears to have happened. Louise Lawler’s “Not Yet Titled (adjusted to fit)” is a stretched photo of Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Bingo” sculpture of a derelict house. And photographs of Matta-Clark’s “Building Cuts” into the walls of PS1 back in 1976 bring the exhibition full circle. Among the other artists in the show are Chantal Akerman, Richard Artschwager, Dara Birnbaum, Mel Bochner, Rudy Burckhardt, John Giorno, William Greaves, Yvonne Rainer, Ugo Rondinone, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, and Sergei Tcherepnin. If you were around in the 1970s, you know that New York City was not exactly a paradise — and “Greater New York” takes us back there while also putting it all in a contemporary now you see it, now you don’t context.
Sound comes and goes in Christine Sun Kim’s visitor-operated “Game of Skill 2.0” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The exhibition will be on view through March 7, and there are still a handful of programs left on the schedule. On February 21 at 4:00, Hayley Aviva Silverman’s live-action “Twister” casts dogs as characters from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Jan de Bont’s 1996 disaster film, Twister; Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World is being shown February 21-27; on February 25 at 7:00, Fia Backström will perform “Aphasia as a visual shape of speaking – A-production and other language syndromes”; on February 28 at 1:00, Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts New York will host participatory activities; on February 28 at 4:00, Devin Kenny will deliver the performance essay “Love, the Sinner”; short films by Ken Jacobs, Jack Smith, Ira Sachs, and others are screening February 28 through March 7; on March 3 & 4 at 7:00, Geo Wyeth will present “Storm Excellent Salad”; and on March 6, you can catch Stewart Uoo’s “It’s Get Better III” at 3:00 and Angie Keefer’s roundtable “What Is Authority?” at 4:00.