PS1's current show, Greater New York 2005, showcases 'up and coming' talent from the 5 boroughs and metro area (i.e. the parts of NJ its ok to like). These sort of shows act as visual directories of what is going on in those inaccessible garrets in the quiet corners of the night. The curators responded (favourably and unfavourably) to 2,000 applications for studio visits and selected based upon those.

From this a strange coherence to the show has formed, which at times seems like part of a natural curatorial policy - showing artists together who complement/respond to each other, and at parts slightly absurd - the overwhelming bias towards media such as paper cut-outs, and towards fairy-tale fantasy imagery. Both the paper cut-outs and the fantasy themes I have no problems with, they are both very arresting. Cut-outs have an incredible delicacy where the edge fetishistically describes both imagery and material in the same moment. The fantasy imagery often results in images of wonderful complexity, where the viewer is seduced drunk under the overwhelming detailing. Neither fetishism nor seduction are altogether entirely unpleasant experiences, but perhaps I'm getting old, for I came wanting something else, something more.

The show brought together the 5 boroughs best cut-out fantasists. It really did. And I came out of the show thinking that the curators are really nice. They've put together some really nice work. It also brought together a nice selection of Yale photographers (I'm assuming here). Its all a bit nice. Nobody said anything to offend me directly - although I'm sure there were lots of oblique nastiness, as a neat counterbalance to the ostensible niceness.

Of course with 160 artists, one is forced to generalise. It is simply too much to really pay attention to. Far too much. This is not the fault of the curators, they have an enormous space to fill, and they didn't ask me to look at all the work. There were some notable pieces of work in there, including the cut-out work of Yuken Teruya; Christian Jankowski's film (sorry about the lack of link); Daniel Arsham's gouache's; and Kent Henricksen's installed embroideries. There are many other's apart from these, but these were among the one's that stuck out to the extent that I wrote a little note about each of them.

It isn't a bad show, however, its wasn't a great show either. I've often considered shows that were just a rattlebag of artists with no real connections between them to be disconcerting and ill-thought out, but with this show the limits of curatorial instinct were showing to the detriment of the variety. Perhaps more explicit curating is what I want: "these are some of the current themes/means/ways that are present in NYC right now, and these artists, we feel, are the best to represent those." Maybe something like that would have kept me happier. Maybe.