Yesterday I went to MoMA and...... I was excited to see a show featuring work from the 1980's to the present, since the late 80's and early 90's was my own "back in the day" as a young artist. At the entrance to this show was a great Cady Noland aluminum cut- out of Patty Hearst juxtaposed with a Jenny Holzer sign behind it. It was great example of the kind of dialogue that can be achieved with combinations of artworks coming from different conceptual places. I wondered if this choice for openers might had been inflected by recent activism in the streets.
The more cynical (or celebratory, depending on your attitude to compulsive consuming) Ashley Bickerton Self Portrait from the mid 80's followed. This artist's subsequent de-camping to Bali ,and increasingly bizarre paintings that fetishize his local existence there, gives a new perspective to this work. A fetish is a fetish is a fetish.
There were also some nice examples of that period's German school of bad and naughty art in the paintings of Albert Oehlen and sculptures of Martin Kippenberger. The neo- Dada gestures and quirky material handling of these artists have fed many art offspring since.
The abject , social, institutional critique was re-presented in Rikrit Tiranija's curry serving piece Untitled (Free) originally held at 303 gallery in 1992. At that time the gallery was de-constructed and piled up in the center of the room. In this incarnation, it seems as if the gallery space is re-constructed in a wood stud version, making a jail like structure around the cooking curry. It recalled for me a set that the Living Theater created for their piece "The Brig", back in the 60's. This was social sculpture as remade for the archive, with museum goers looking for.... a free lunch?
As I exited the galleries that also held a beautifully installed review of Fluxus art, I noticed an installation of a wallpaper piece by George Brecht, No Smoking, from that period which looked like it could have been done yesterday with its super-graphic, spectacular, cynicism.
Tom McGlynn
copyright 2012
copyright 2012
