The Generational: Younger Than Jesus
The New Museum's Signature Triennial
By: Adam Zucker - May 11, 2009
April 8 to July 5
The New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212 219 1222
Jesus Christ died at the age of thirty-three. During such a brief life, Jesus accomplished wonders and miracles that seem too exhausting to comprehend. At an age when many young adults are playing beer pong in their college dormitory Jesus was turning water into wine. Does this mean that our generation is a group of non-magical slackers? By the age of thirty-three what can we accomplish? It may be way too optimistic but I really do still have hope for the human race. The world needs a new direction as we navigate rough and uncertain times.
The art world needs fresh energy to be saved from its current depleted state. Post Modernism emerged at the end of the 1970s and there is still confusion as to the direction of contemporary art. Some might feel that we have moved past Post-Modernist constructs while others believe we are stuck in a rut. There is a lot of "hip" work in the art galleries of Chelsea and the Lower East Side. I say "hip" because this is the kind of work that is common to most artists graduating from academic programs. The days of great painting are numbered when students are discouraged from figurative work. One is often put off by so much pretentious and self absorbed work being shown by emerging artists.
We long for the day when art becomes personal again. A beacon of hope shines in some of the artists in the New Museum's current exhibition Younger Than Jesus. This exhibition shows fifty artists from twenty-five countries all under the age of thirty-three. Many of these artists have never been seen in an American museum.. It's not clear how the curators came up with the fifty names, but the catalog describes that it was through the suggestion of colleagues. It would be interesting to know who these colleagues were, their nationalities, and specific interests.
While initially it was difficult grappling with the idea that this art epitomizes my generation there was enough overall relevance to make this plausible. Based on the generational theme I expected plenty of Internet, media pieces, shock and awe, or social commentary. There definitely were these elements in lots of works. Guthrie Lonergan's Myspace Intro Playlist (2006) is a video compilation indicative of the Youtube and Myspace trend, Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" has been cut in half thanks to the eight-minute viral videos. Arguably, Youtube will soon become a popular medium for emerging artists.
Unfortunately, there were pieces that followed the standard mainstream trend for conceptual art. Works of art like Loris Gréaud's sculptural piece Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted, Stairway Edit (2007) and Corey Arcangel's gradient spectrum print are examples of art that feel stagnant and redundant. These works don't reveal anything about the artist who made them. They feel almost entirely detached from the creator. This is indicative that some of us are still stuck in the rut of the same conceptual ideologies. These works become an escape from reality but are far too minimal to allow any sense of imagination or satisfying release. It seems that many individuals in this generation are unsure of how to categorize themselves.
Conceptual artists like Cyprien Gaillard, Liz Lynn and Liu Chuang successfully reflect on the state of our generation while exploring the human condition. By juxtaposing the order and chaos that exist within contemporary society, and showing the reclamation of nature over modern architecture, Gaillard presents us with the idea of modern ruins. This is illustrated in his exhilarating thirty-minute video Desiansky Raion (2007). The video starts out with a battle royal between two gangs inside a St. Petersburg housing complex. Next there is a grandiose display of fireworks over a housing complex just before it is blown to bits. The video ends with a low altitude flight over a mass of desolate snow covered apartment towers.
Liz Glynn's 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project (2008-09) literally challenges the expression "Rome wasn't built in a day." Her piece employs volunteers to build cardboard replicas of the city. A very hopeful message becomes clear that the time to build a truly great future should start this very moment.
Liu Chuang's series, Buying Everything On You (2006-08) makes an aesthetic comment on personal identity and materialism. By striping the subject down of their possessions our perception of them becomes altered. Typically, we define ourselves by what we own, this false modesty is exposed once our consumer goods are stripped away.
While taken in by these conceptual pieces, to me, a painting's expression still speaks louder then all other mediums. Some of the strongest work in the exhivition were figurative paintings by the Iranian-American, Tala Madani, and the Polish born, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Tala Madani's style falls somewhere between painterly expressionism and cartoon inspired line drawing. Her characters are Middle Eastern men and the subjects are overtly sexual and incredibly common depictions of the machismo man. She then toys with the stereotypes and the self-perception of cultural and sexual identity. Zoilkowski's paintings are far more technical. They combine the surreal and macabre and abstract the human figure through entangled veins and organs that stretch wildly across the canvas. It is encouraging to see that there are academically educated painters still working with the figure .
While the current art market and auction houses suffer, some galleries are focusing on established artists rather then emerging talent. This is likely to change only when smart curators and wiser art historians get hip to the big picture. The curators and staff at the New Museum provide an outlet for both emerging and international artists that don't have long resumes. I left this exhibition inspired to develop work that is more a reflection of my personal identity. Any exhibition that leaves one hungry to create is definitely worthwhile. Our generation doesn't have to re-invent the wheel. The foundation has been set out for us to run with, the crucial point is that we evolve these ideas into relevant and beneficial manifestations. Let's put the Post-Modern past behind us, and journey into the future with some of these bright young artists.