Defamation of Character The Gold Standard Altered, Stitched and Gathered Music Is a Better Noise P.S. 1 Art Review

Correction Appended

Is architecture destiny where museums are concerned? As more and more of them mortgage their futures to big, expensive destination buildings, it sure seems that way. So maybe the recurring, often surprising vitality of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center is worth considering from an architectural standpoint. Sure, the place has great DNA from a gene pool that reaches back to the 1970s, when art was being reinvented and museums were too, partly through the rise of alternative spaces, one of which became P.S. 1.

Skip to next paragraph Multimedia Slide Show Doom and Glitter, Carefully Orchestrated Readers’ Opinions Forum: Artists and Exhibitions

Enlarge This Image Thomas Demand

“Bullion,” a photograph by Thomas Demand in the exhibition “The Gold Standard,” at P.S. 1. More Photos »

Perhaps more important, P.S. 1 managed to procure a great stage for its alternative act: a rambling, neglected Romanesque Revival public school building in Long Island City, Queens. Over the years the building has been extensively upgraded without being substantially altered or made posh. In addition, it was brilliantly reconfigured in a single stroke in 1997, when the structure's back door was converted into a front entrance centered on a large, walled-in courtyard. There have been losses, including the elimination, for more gallery space, of the International Studios Programs, which provided artists from around the world a yearlong foothold in New York. But if P.S. 1 has shifted its commitment from production to display, as some observers have charged, it has also evolved into a place that serves art by giving another put-upon group - museum curators - the freedom and space to learn their craft.

This is especially true right now, with the building filled to overflowing by four large group shows. The rationales behind "Defamation of Character," "The Gold Standard," "Altered, Stitched and Gathered" and "Music Is a Better Noise" are disparate, if not antagonistic, and run the gamut from formal to formless. But combined, they present new and recent work by more than 130 artists, forming an inadvertent, four-part biennial that reaches back to the 1970s, when P.S. 1 was founded.

"Defamation of Character" and "The Gold Standard," the two largest shows, are unified, even visually coherent, in an almost traditional curatorial sense. They arrive at similarly dystopic views of contemporary life by radically different paths, one dark and tortured, the other paved in gold.

In "Defamation of Character" the British-born, New York-based writer Neville Wakefield, who became a curatorial advisor at P.S. 1 at the beginning of 2006, has created a bracing black hole in which movements like Dada, Fluxus, Punk, Pop, Conceptual and neo-Conceptual mingle with performance art, feminism, abject art with a capital A and various forms of appropriation.

Largely devoid of color, these works by 46 artists take issue with most aspects of contemporary, and especially American, society. A high premium is placed on shock value, with frequent references to sex, violence, bodily functions, celebrity, consumerism and power.

In the show's opening gallery black lines and shades of gray mingle to visually lively effect. "Cioran Handrail," a long, free-floating squiggle of black polyurethane (toxic smoke? excrement?) by Urs Fischer, spirals toward "The Period," by Glenn Ligon, which spells out the word America in lighted neon tubing that has been painted matte black. The letters, treated this way, look inert, implacable and yet somehow stifled - giving an impression of menace and oppression. On the walls politics, abstraction, the female body and self-loathing, as well as appropriation, collage, erasure and drawing, are effectively broached by Lutz Bacher, Christopher Wool, Dash Snow and Martin Kippenberger.

While similar to previous exhibitions organized by Mr. Wakefield, this one sustains its curatorial vision while venturing beyond a predictable clique of hip male artists overly prone to using black. It might be described as the usual suspects with invited guests, including more women.

Artists like Sue Williams, Kathe Burkhart, Sarah Lucas, Karen Kilimnik and Ms. Bacher get credit for cultivating dystopic visions before the current crop of young men, and every gallery contains a combination of new and older work. Contemporary needn't mean today; artistic discontent has a long history. It includes, for example, Richard Hamilton's 1967 news-clip collage about the Rolling Stones' drug bust; works from the 1970s by the Los Angelinos Paul McCarthy, Chris Burden and Jack Goldstein; and the famously antiroyal montages of Queen Elizabeth II by the British graphic designer Jamie Reid, one of which appeared on a Sex Pistols album cover.

1 2 Next Page »

"Defamation of Character" and "The Gold Standard" are on view through Jan. 15; "Altered, Stitched and Gathered," through Jan. 22; and "Music Is a Better Noise," through Jan. 29. All are at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; (718) 784-2084.

Correction: January 3, 2007

An art review in Weekend on Friday about four shows at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens misstated the name of the artist who has a large embroidered silk screen in the "Gold Standard" show. He is Kent Henricksen, not Kurt Hendrickson.

The review also misidentified the country in which workers at a gold mine are shown in a short video by Alfredo Jaar called "Introduction to a Distant World." It is Brazil, not South Africa.

It also misstated the year that Neville Wakefield, who put together the "Defamation of Character" show, became a curatorial adviser at P.S. 1. It was at the beginning of 2006, not the beginning of 2005.

More Topics:
Kitco
Provides quotes, charts, and news about gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metals.