2008-03-07

Art made in New York since 9/11 is the theme, or rather the mood, of this 36-artist group show (an expanded version of an exhibition at the Berlin gallery Artnews Projects in October 2007). With oblique references to the economy and to drug culture, the title suggests a citywide diagnosis of post-traumatic stress or even a kind of manic depression.

At one end of the spectrum is Matthew Higgs’s framed book page reading “Late 20th Century Art”; at the other is Sam Gordon’s “24 Hours in New York (The Lost Kinetic World, Volumes 1-12)” (2005-7), a day’s worth of video footage of local artists and art world personalities.

A few paintings stand out from the glut of appropriation, assemblage and mixed-media works. Keith Mayerson’s painting “9/11” (2007) renders the smoke from the burning towers in a cloying Impressionist palette. Daniel Lefcourt’s abstract acrylics-on-board resemble blacked-out lines of text from government documents. Jeronimo Elespe’s small oil portrait of a dark-haired boy in a navy anorak has an unsettling, vaguely memorial aspect.

Resurrected Pop describes the work of Tom Burr, who makes the homoerotic subtext of Warhol’s “13 Most Wanted Men” fully explicit, and that of Scott Hug, whose “JFK” (2007) pairs a black mirror with a photograph of President Kennedy in dark sunglasses. One is celebratory, the other mournful; both feel current. KAREN ROSENBERG