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The Greater New York show at P.S.1 opened this past weekend. The show features over 160 artists who have emerged since 2000. Obviously with that many people the opening was a zoo, but the quick impressions I got were not very positive. So much of the work fell into obvious categories such as decoration, ironic jackass-style videos (Do we really need to see two teenagers wrestling again?), hippie redux, and labor-intensive obsessive-ness. The show was surprisingly sexless, emotionless and almost devoid of political ideas. It was supposed to reflect the last five years of art making in New York and this could explain the familiarity of much of it, but it just seemed like there was something missing. After traipsing through room after room, I found it all just began to look like art, losing all relevance to the outside world. With so many artists making work that engages outside of the context of
galleries and museums this was a disappointment. The only thing that really got me was James Turrell’s permanent installation at P.S.1, which is simply a room with no ceiling where you look up. Guess you can’t really compete with the sky.

- Asha Schechter [Thursday, March 17th, 2005]

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