In a recent discussion with writer Jonathan Lethem at Cooper Union, Patti Smith was asked if it was possible for young artists to come to New York City and find the path to stardom that she did.  In response, Smith told the crowd, “New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling.”  On Sunday, May 23, PS1 MoMA opened the third iteration of its quinquennial celebration of emerging artists who live and work in New York – Greater New York – which will run through October 20, 2010. This year’s show features some 68 artists which marks a steep fall from the 160 artists in the 2005 edition, perhaps adding some truth to Smith’s words.

According to the press release, this year’s show – overseen by P.S.1 director Klaus Biesenbach, Museum of Modern Art drawings curator Connie Butler, and P.S.1 curatorial adviser Neville Wakefield – will center “largely on the process of creation and the generative nature of the artist’s studio.” Leading up to the opening of Greater New York, artists including Franklin Evans, Dani Leventhal, and Kalup Linzy utilized PS1 as studio space to create new work on-site.  This sort of artistic production will be ongoing throughout the exhibition in locations like the Boiler Room, where Whitney Biennialist Aki Sasamoto has invited the artist Saul Melman to collaborate. The Bruce High Quality Foundation also engages with this notion with their commission to develop an “art pedestal exchange program,” a seemingly minimal installation that groups beautifully refined new “art pedestals” that will be offered to art schools in exchange for their old worn pedestals. Over the course of the exhibition what began as a pristine white installation will transform into an amalgam of used exhibition furniture.

Conrad Ventur’s “This Is My Life (Shirley Bassey)”

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