greater ny 2005 at ps1

Last Saturday I went to the P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center, which is an affiliate of MOMA NY. The current exhibit, "Greater NY 2005" consists of work selected by a group of curators who sifted through applicants that responded to the open call for the exhibit. Over 160 artists were selected, and their names can be seen on the recently poorly re-designed P.S.1 website The list of artist names is static, but when you click on their names, nothing happens. The only way to see the artwork by the list of names featured is to sit through a flash slideshow that has no user control, very circa 1998.

Any art survey is always met with a variety of debate and complaints. The Brainstormers who formed together to (text from their site)

BRAINSTORMERS HISTORY:

On a dark and stormy night in DUMBO, a group of emerging women artists joined powers to combat gender inequality in the artworld.

Outraged by the circulating rumors concerning the numbers of women artists included in the 2nd Greater New York Exhibition at PS1, they were inspired to research the real numbers. What they found confirmed that women artists are STILL being silenced by curators and dealers in the public sector. As artists who want to see the true discourse and exchange of ideas reflected in the public sphere, they will confront this ongoing curatorial catastrophe until its end.

Founders Maria Dumlao, Jane Johnston, Elaine Kaufmann, and Danielle Mysliwiec are all recent graduates of the Hunter College MFA program.

The Brainstormers staged a protest regarding the lack of the representation women artists at the Greater NY 2005 exhibit at P.S.1.



P.S.1 released the ratio of male to female artists featured at the exhibit, which was 100 men and 50 women. On the Brainstormer site they have pictures of the curators of the exhibition and a caption surrounding their images:



Along with the Brainstormer protest regarding the P.S.1 exhibition is a fake press release about the Greater New York exhibit that was being circulated. The text of the document presented ideas such as the provision of an artist union as well as representation from people of various demographics in New York City. The text is essentially a critique of the issues surrounding the exhibition cloaked in the form of an offical looking P.S.1 press release, an impressive piece of social engineering.

Artists and their work that caught my attention from the Greater NY exhibit:

Kent Henricksen


-Various pieces: Embroidered masks and ropes on the characters of old embroidery pieces, commenting on the alteration of art that revealed genitalia and other censored parts of the body

Ian Burns
-The Epic Tour: an interactive wooden piece, wherein the viewer rides a cart that is built on a train track. The cart stops at sections of the piece where various scenes are played out. The paper installed on the side of the cart acts like a screen, enabling the shadows of the various scenes to glimpsed by the viewer as they ride around the piece. This was the most engaging piece in the exhibition because not only could a viewer actually insert themselves in the piece by riding the cart, but the other viewers that come into the room where the piece is installed actually follow the cart that the viewer is in and try to see what the rider is seeing. The piece is itself providing and directing the movement of the viewers, which no other piece did in the exhibition.

I could not find an accessible site pertaining to his work with the exception of a sparse listing which is unfortunate, since he created the most dynamic piece at the Greater NY exhibition. The aforementioned link does provide somewhat of an idea regarding the look of and feel of The Epic Tour.

Yuken Teruya




These pieces were NOT as P.S.1, I have merely posted them as examples of what the work resembled. The tree pieces exhibited at P.S.1 were crafted with more detail.
-Various pieces: Shopping bags from iconic botiques/department stores that have their fronts cut up into the shape of trees that are contained in the shopping bags at a vertical angle. These pieces are delicate and meticulously produced dioramas with the use of one material (the shopping bag).

David Moreno
-Stereoma: Two circular speaker tweeters mounted on thin metal posts that moved according to the audio that it transmitted from a receive

I found absolutely nothing on the web for this artist.

Kirsten Hassenfeld





These pieces were NOT at P.S.1 I am using them as examples of the nature of her work.

-Sweet Nothing: a work primarily composed of paper productions of gems, cakes and ornate objects that are otherwise made of hard and heavy material. Interesting ideas of the portrayal of valuable/heirloom/luxurious objects, all rendered in paper form.

The only digital media piece that provided any intriguing concepts and that was technically sound was a piece entitled Dark Sun Squeeze by Pavel Wojtasik



stills from Dark Sun Squeeze

which was a visual study of a sewage plant. Each scene was a close up of the various stages of the processing in a sewage plant for reuse. Even though the thought of what was being shot was repulsive, the shots were paced at a slow rate and each scene progressed as elegant and geometric shots of waste and its transformation into product. The installation of the piece was in a room wherein the only other piece was another video piece that just showed a rotating black globe with the only visible country being the United States which was a an irritatingly obvious piece, so as a viewer, you could not help but associate both video pieces together, which detracted from the value of the Dark Sun Squeeze piece in the context of how the work was installed.

I am curious as to why there was no digital interactive work at the Greater NY exhibit. The majority of work was that of traditional media: drawing, painting, and sculpture. Were there no applicants that demonstrated enough skill in digital interactive arts to have their work to be shown? Or did the curators of Greater NY just not consider digital art (with the exception of video) representative of the cross section of emerging artists with talent in New York City?