{"id":466,"date":"2003-05-30T05:22:01","date_gmt":"2003-05-30T05:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=466"},"modified":"2008-10-29T05:25:19","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T05:25:19","slug":"living-inside-the-grid-at-new-museum-of-contemporary-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2003\/05\/30\/living-inside-the-grid-at-new-museum-of-contemporary-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Inside the Grid, at New Museum of Contemporary Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine<\/p>\n

\"N55,<\/a>
N55, Public things, Photo Jason Mandella<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reporting recently from Baghdad, writer Jon Lee Anderson described an Iraqi man\u2019s assumption that the U.S. population was anti-war because of comments he had heard on American satellite television. This exchange suggested a game of media ping-pong, a \u2018us watching them, watching us\u2019 scenario that provided a glimpse of how information is exchanged on a global scale. This kind of sudden insight, and more obvious evidence of how the world is organized in both discrete and interlocked systems, was the subject of \u2018Living Inside the Grid.\u2019 At the core of the exhibition concept was curator Dan Cameron\u2019s observation that \u201c…the inhabited grid has become the irreducible sign of the world we live in today.\u201d Cameron supported his assertion by assembling twenty-four artists or artist groups from twelve countries, whose work in some way acknowledges or interacts with the systems that order our worlds.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, the exhibition excluded web-informed artwork. Instead, art in a range of media explored how the concept of the grid, made so pervasive by the Internet, is reapplied to other aspects of life from the intimate to the international. Using themselves as their subject matter, Danica Phelps applied systemization to her life by logging all her art sales, expenses and activities, while the late Israeli artist Absalon videoed himself hitting and kicking at invisible bonds. An impressive sculpture, constructed of common materials used to build fences, by Monica Bonvicini and a portable group of interlocking, triangular plastic \u2018Public Things\u2019 by N55 each challenged prepackaged design for the masses. The grid extended to the international level with drawn diagrams outlining conspiracies by Mark Lombardi and a mesmerizing projection of patterns made with three letter airport abbreviations by Langlands and Bell. Rico Gatson\u2019s collages of manipulated movie clips critiqued the dissemination of racial stereotypes, while Tomoko Takahashi\u2019s lighthearted video of shredded paper being thrown from a tower played on a stack of nine monitors.<\/p>\n

\"Monica<\/a>
Monica Bonvicini, Turning Walls, 2001, Wooden Metal and Plastic Fencing over a Wood Armature, Plants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This exhibition proposed that grid systems are so ubiquitous that they are integral to perception and representation. However, the success of this thesis undermines the criteria for selecting artwork for the show by suggesting that most art in touch with contemporary culture would in some way replicate the grid. If fact, several pieces in the show were similar to work by artists who have been more visible recently in New York. For instance, Douglas Blau\u2019s installation of film stills of women in bed strongly recalled Christian Marclay\u2019s video montage and German artist Roland Boden\u2019s portable urban shelters are similar to Andrea Zittel\u2019s live-in units. This only serves to prove Cameron\u2019s point, however, while reminding us that several artists can work in similar ways at one time. \u2018Living Inside the Grid\u2019 brings together a variety of diverse artwork under the theme of the grid, but viewers who took time to connect the dots will see patterns emerging in galleries across town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine Reporting recently from Baghdad, writer Jon Lee Anderson described an Iraqi man\u2019s assumption that the U.S. population was anti-war because of comments he had heard on American satellite television. This exchange suggested a game of media ping-pong, a \u2018us watching them, watching us\u2019 scenario that provided a glimpse of how information … <\/p>\n

Read more “Living Inside the Grid, at New Museum of Contemporary Art”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[8,18,9,15,14,13,12,17,10,16,11],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-contemporary","tag-critic","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-new-york","tag-photography","tag-sculpture","tag-tour","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-7w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}