Greater New York at MOMA PS 1

MOMA PS1 in Queens was having what might be called their version of a biennial, a show focusing on art from New York City.   I went with low expectations, expecting the usual mishmash of bad video, installations, agitprop, etc.   (Though I am ever hopeful, which is why I go in the first place.)  Instead I was pleasantly surprised with a lot a very interesting art ranging through a wide variety of media, aesthetics, and ages (some of the artists were even dead!).   The focus was on art created between the 1970's and now.  There were even some black and white photographs and paintings. The bad video, installations, and agitprop were all still there, of course, but along side all kinds of interesting work, mostly from people I had never heard of.  Maybe some of the  quality of the work had to do with the curators focus on work concerning New York.   Though when I read this description of the various mini-catalogs as:

"engaging a range of subjects including disco, performance anxiety, real estate, and newly unearthed historical documents. "

I had my doubts, though those are certainly New York things.    A little more description:

"....Greater New York departs from the show’s traditional focus on youth, instead examining points of connection and tension between our desire for the new and nostalgia for that which it displaces."

But in any case, some of the more photogenic highlights included an installation from a group called Kiosk consisting of a large number of unique objects, installed in translucent plastic cubes.  And there are colorful neon lights as well.  Having grown up in a house filled with eccentric objects, this installation appealed to me. Each item is numbered, and a description can be summoned through a cell phone call.

Who wouldn't want a red grater:

These sculptures were made out some sort of fiberglass/resin material incorporating all kinds of heterogeneous other materials, even cockroaches (very New York):

There were several miniature city-related pieces, this one in an aquarium-like installation;

A city of monuments:

And even a modest painting of garbage cans:

And works made out of distressed fragments of shopping bags:

A satellite dish like wall installation, which also functioned as a sound gathering acoustic object:

Closeup of above:

As it was yet another warm and sunny November day, when I was done I decided to walk back to Manhattan via the Queensboro Bridge.  That area of Queens where PS1 is located, Long Island City, is a peculiar mixture of old, small townhouses, industrial warehouses, and new giant high-rise residential buildings, along with the complex structures involving intersections of the various elevated trains and the ending of the bridge.

The pathway on the bridge is stimulating, but the experience is marred by the extreme noise and fumes from the vehicle traffic on one side and the high chain link fence on the other.  But I always love to look at the structures of bridges,  especially closeup, and the color schemes are sometimes surprising.

A truck and the elevated:

Barbed wire circle and high-rise construction:

On the bridge:

The camera turns what is a very organized and logically constructed structure into chaos:

 What is this?

Red pipes and duct tape!