Here’s an idea for an
exhibition. Take a year and curate a tight selection of what was exhibited
around town in that year. Well, not our idea but the New Museum in New York’s.
What you got was a smart mix of art that was difficult at the time and has now
come into focus, works that seemed important and now not so much, artists who
were at their peak and others who were just about to break through. A fine curatorial
sieve was set across time (1993) and place (NY) and yet as a viewer you had a
lot of ideas to play with. The Museum is selling it as a time capsule but it's
more an opportunity to step back and make a wider judgement than focus on
quirky or outdated details as time capsules are notorious for doing. And to cap
it off the Museum commissioned Rudolf Stingel to install an extraordinary floor covering
that flowed from the elevators through the gallery spaces bringing the show
together in a way bright orange carpet was never designed to do.
Images: top Rudolf Stingel’s carpet in a little side action as the lift opens onto the gallery space, second row left Felix
Gonzalez Torres Untitled
(couples)
and right a detail from the billboard work untitled. Third row Derek Jarman’s Blue and bottom Charles Ray’s Family romance. All from 1993.
