Damian Ortega "Controller of the Universe," 2007That Was Then... This Is Now
P.S.1
June 22 - Sept. 24, 2008
The scent of the late 60s is in the air again at P.S.1, in a group show entitled "That Was Then... This Is Now" that pairs art from back-then with contemporary examples, with an emphasis on political work. Unlike WACK!, the museum's recent inspired survey of feminist art from the 60s and beyond (my review here), the current show feels unfocused and forced.
The work, some of it exceptional, is shoehorned into three rather awkward sections: Weapons, Dreams and Flags.
The first and strongest of these starts with a bang, as you stare down the barrel of Pino Pascali's "Cannone Semovente (Gun)" (1965), a realistic howitzer made of wood that aims at you across a gallery filled with Chris Burden's "Reason for the Neutron Bomb" (1984) -- a jaw-dropping floor grid of 50,000 nickels and matches that represent magnitude of the Soviet tank presence in Eastern Europe. Our first thought is to wonder what kind of magic trick was required to install it -- a squadron of interns working around the clock?Works vary in temperament and approach. Alfredo Jarr's lovely but disturbing photographs coolly document various types of landmines; square, round and spikey, they are artfully arranged on a white background. Nancy Spiro's violent drawings of man-devouring helicopter dragons are an angry rebuff to the Vietnam War. The late Jeremy Blake's hazy and demented video channels the weirdness of the Winchester Mystery House in California, a byzantine structure once inhabited by the emotionally challenged widow of the gun maker. (To assuage the angry spirits of gun victims, she built innumerate additions, some with irrational design features like stairways to nowhere).
Valerie Export's "Action Pants, Genital Pants," a confrontational photograph of the artist holding a machine gun dressed in crotchless pants could easily have hung in the WACK! exhibition. Thomas Ruff's ubiquitous pixelated print of the burning World Trade Center works in this show's context, raising questions about the proliferation of images and memory. 
Somewhat off-topic is the eye-catching is the enigmatically titled "Controller of the Universe" by Damian Ortega, a frozen explosion of old tools -- axes, saws, scissors, etc. -- hung from the ceiling to look like they're flying out at you. More obtuse and enigmatic is the room-size "Vibrating Forest from the Series Fireworks" by Dennis Oppenheim, an arrangement with what appears to be part of an amusement park ride, a cotton candy (made of cotton) and sticks of fireworks.Works about the Iraq War standout. An-My La's photos of beaches in California and Iraq show soldiers and military vehicles assembling where one expects to see lifeguards and volleyball. Steve Mumford's exquisite diaristic watercolors of Iraq, some made as recently as May of this year, put us in the midst of the everyday lives of soldiers.
The uneven "Dreams" section runs the gamut from institutional critique and other protests to more diffuse utopian fantasies; where it should provide connective tissue between the show's other more concrete wings, it comes across like a babble of voices.
One gallery tells the story of early-70s protests of the Art Worker Coalition and others, mainly aimed at the MoMA, for representation for women and people of color, against the Vietnam War and for a free day at the museum. Visually dry, it evinces the radical excitement of the era (more information at the Primary Information Web site). It's another piece that would have been at home at the WACK! show. Pleasingly it takes aim at its corporate parent; the last digs of P.S.1's departing director Alanna Heiss?
Next door is the contemporary counterpart -- video of a satirical performance by Andrea Frasier, "Inaugural Speech" (1997), in which she assumes the role of a museum director, with an over-the-top and absurdist outpouring of pretentious and sycophantic blather. Equally cheeky is Paul Chan, recently the subject a retrospective at the New Museum (my review here), who contributes "Now Let Us Praise American Leftists," a slide show of faces with unusual facial hair, made using law enforcement's FACES profiling technology; at its conclusion you are told each face represents one variety of radical political organization -- anarchist, democratic socialists, etc. Its title, a reference to James Agee and Walker Evans classic reportage on the lives of sharecroppers, leaves us puzzled.
Hippydom gets a nod with the colorful 60s peace-and-love silkscreens by the celebrated Sister Corita Kent, similarities to which can been seen in the hanging banners ("Pagan Rights," "Our Goddess Gave Birth to Your God") by the contemporary West Coast collective My Barbarian. More disappointing are the psychedeco paintings by emerging artists Michael Lazarus and Carrie Moyer.
Unnecessary is the inclusion of architectural fantasists Superstudio and Archigram -- a particularly overworn reference point these days -- and conceptual-minded contributions by Dan Graham and Lawrence Weiner. Also superfluous and sadly without a contemporary equivalent is "Winter Soldier," a documentary about 1971 antiwar meeting of Vietnam vets.
The final tiresome section, is simply a big room full of flags -- mainly American flags, predictably including something by flag father Jasper Johns. It's a lesser example, as are two Warhols in the "Weapons" section. You'd think they could have borrowed something better from MoMA HQ.
You see flags of every variation -- done in all black, all white, foil, upside-down, in the red-green-black of the Pan-African Movement (by David Hammons) and on the cover of a Van Halen album. The most inventive was by Mitch Epstein -- an American flag hanging in a dry cleaning plastic on a hanger, making me think about the ordinariness of the symbol, as well as its metaphoric need for a clean. I also liked Gardar Eide Einarsson's computer clip-art flag with the default text that reads "Add you text to personalize."
Breaking the monotony is a police car sculpture by Spencer Sweeney that hangs from the ceiling, a blackened disco ball complementing its usual array of flashing roof lights. While visually arresting (ahem), it is ultimately unsatisfying. More thoughtful is Hans Haacke's "Collateral," a shopping cart full of flag buttons that comments on the overlap of commerce and patriotism.
Evidence from two performances both use flags as clothing, and alow us a peek underneath. From the 60s, Yvonne Rainer's "Trio A with Flags," a protest performance of men and women nude but for flag tunics, and a Jen DeNike more recent video "Flag Girls," a kind of striptease in which model-looking women unwrap themselves and, naked, walk off camera.
"That Was Then..." promises art that is politically engaged. Conspicuously abscent are the stalwarts of identity politics like Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson and Cindy Sherman. Instead, we're given serious, politically minded works from the 60s and, with some exceptions, weaker contemporary work. If this show is an accurate barometer, emerging artists are more interested in borrowing the styles and strategies of the early era, adapting it toward tamer, more market-friendly aesthetic concerns. Why highlight this shortcoming? Surely there is some exciting activist art today, or is there?
The uneven "Dreams" section runs the gamut from institutional critique and other protests to more diffuse utopian fantasies; where it should provide connective tissue between the show's other more concrete wings, it comes across like a babble of voices.
One gallery tells the story of early-70s protests of the Art Worker Coalition and others, mainly aimed at the MoMA, for representation for women and people of color, against the Vietnam War and for a free day at the museum. Visually dry, it evinces the radical excitement of the era (more information at the Primary Information Web site). It's another piece that would have been at home at the WACK! show. Pleasingly it takes aim at its corporate parent; the last digs of P.S.1's departing director Alanna Heiss?
Next door is the contemporary counterpart -- video of a satirical performance by Andrea Frasier, "Inaugural Speech" (1997), in which she assumes the role of a museum director, with an over-the-top and absurdist outpouring of pretentious and sycophantic blather. Equally cheeky is Paul Chan, recently the subject a retrospective at the New Museum (my review here), who contributes "Now Let Us Praise American Leftists," a slide show of faces with unusual facial hair, made using law enforcement's FACES profiling technology; at its conclusion you are told each face represents one variety of radical political organization -- anarchist, democratic socialists, etc. Its title, a reference to James Agee and Walker Evans classic reportage on the lives of sharecroppers, leaves us puzzled.Hippydom gets a nod with the colorful 60s peace-and-love silkscreens by the celebrated Sister Corita Kent, similarities to which can been seen in the hanging banners ("Pagan Rights," "Our Goddess Gave Birth to Your God") by the contemporary West Coast collective My Barbarian. More disappointing are the psychedeco paintings by emerging artists Michael Lazarus and Carrie Moyer.
Unnecessary is the inclusion of architectural fantasists Superstudio and Archigram -- a particularly overworn reference point these days -- and conceptual-minded contributions by Dan Graham and Lawrence Weiner. Also superfluous and sadly without a contemporary equivalent is "Winter Soldier," a documentary about 1971 antiwar meeting of Vietnam vets.
The final tiresome section, is simply a big room full of flags -- mainly American flags, predictably including something by flag father Jasper Johns. It's a lesser example, as are two Warhols in the "Weapons" section. You'd think they could have borrowed something better from MoMA HQ.
You see flags of every variation -- done in all black, all white, foil, upside-down, in the red-green-black of the Pan-African Movement (by David Hammons) and on the cover of a Van Halen album. The most inventive was by Mitch Epstein -- an American flag hanging in a dry cleaning plastic on a hanger, making me think about the ordinariness of the symbol, as well as its metaphoric need for a clean. I also liked Gardar Eide Einarsson's computer clip-art flag with the default text that reads "Add you text to personalize."
Breaking the monotony is a police car sculpture by Spencer Sweeney that hangs from the ceiling, a blackened disco ball complementing its usual array of flashing roof lights. While visually arresting (ahem), it is ultimately unsatisfying. More thoughtful is Hans Haacke's "Collateral," a shopping cart full of flag buttons that comments on the overlap of commerce and patriotism.Evidence from two performances both use flags as clothing, and alow us a peek underneath. From the 60s, Yvonne Rainer's "Trio A with Flags," a protest performance of men and women nude but for flag tunics, and a Jen DeNike more recent video "Flag Girls," a kind of striptease in which model-looking women unwrap themselves and, naked, walk off camera.
"That Was Then..." promises art that is politically engaged. Conspicuously abscent are the stalwarts of identity politics like Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson and Cindy Sherman. Instead, we're given serious, politically minded works from the 60s and, with some exceptions, weaker contemporary work. If this show is an accurate barometer, emerging artists are more interested in borrowing the styles and strategies of the early era, adapting it toward tamer, more market-friendly aesthetic concerns. Why highlight this shortcoming? Surely there is some exciting activist art today, or is there?
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