"Greater New York" Takes the Pulse of the City

The exhibition “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1 runs through Aug. 17 and presents 53 living artists working in New York, with varied origins and many younger participants. The show’s density and difference shatter the quiet veneer of traditional galleries, exposing the city’s clamor and nervous energy. Artworks span emotional range from mirth to alienation. Louis Osmosis’s installation uses found objects and confetti-like grit to evoke the disheveled aftermath of a party. Piero Penizzotto’s papier-mâché sculptures convey vernacular realism and summer humidity. Kameron Neal’s two-channel video uses N.Y.P.D. surveillance footage to show pedestrians realizing they are being watched. Kenneth Tam’s video portrays taxi drivers facing economic erosion from rideshare apps.

"The art works display the emotional range of the city, from ebullience to alienation. Some moments are ample with mirth: take, for example, the saccharine grit of a sculpture installation by Louis Osmosis, which includes assemblages of found objects and looks a bit like the dishevelled morning after a party, confetti dappling the gallery floor and several of the art works; or the vernacular realness of Piero Penizzotto's papier-mâché sculptures, one of which depicts four women sitting in lawn chairs and shooting the shit-all that's missing is a sidewalk underfoot and the humid clasp of New York summer."

"But there is also room for the sobriety and pain that sharpen the city's social economy: Kameron Neal's two-channel video utilizes surveillance footage from the N.Y.P.D.'s archive, in which we repeatedly witness pedestrians realize that they're being watched. Kenneth Tam's video work dwells with a community of taxi-drivers struggling with the erosion of their trade in the wake of rideshare apps."

"As it should, the quinquennial showcase (running through Aug. 17) reels with the density and difference that tessellate this city; the placid veneer holding together the hushed galleries of Chelsea and Tribeca is here shattered to expose the clamor of the nervous system underneath. The fifty-three artists in the show are all living and working in New York (though of vastly varied origins); many of them are young, doing their best in a city that seems to valorize yet beleaguer youth."

Read at The New Yorker