Andrew J. Greene “Big Apple logistics”

Tomorrow

This event has ended.

Tomorrow presents the fall with Big Apple logistics, an exhibition by Andrew J. Greene.

The exhibition appears like others as an aggregation of after thoughts on city living. Consider it Contemporary Art beside itself—the subject behind the camera in the non-place of faux public space, just off the clock, young artist or low-level suit: both in debt, careerist, complicit… they’re getting by in the Big Apple.1

The photographed park areas are spatial expressions of compromise and the dominance of real estate. Determined in scale by zoning in the pursuit of additional square footage at the tops of towers, they range in design from postmodern civic vernacular to millennial junkspace. Amongst the documentation of conceded architectural praxis is Silk Icon (Pho Viet Huong), a silhouette of Vietnam featuring a ticking clock and the extinct flag of the US backed south. Reproduced from a bygone Pho eatery’s original, its form has been gentrified into an appliqué for white box or marble clad condo. Greene performs an upcycling simulation of colloquial taste he observes at the junction of class and “urban renewal.”

Likewise, Ann Schaumburger: Urban Oasis, 1997 (Duck), and Ming Fay: Shad Crossing, Delancey Orchard, 2004 (Cherry) are 1:1 scale replicas of city-commissioned mosaics located within midtown and lower-east side MTA stations, underground labyrinths filled with New York’s increasingly transplant population. The suburbanization of public assets, from parks to transit, and marketing of Big Apple dreams have delivered an increasingly exclusive homogeneous social space ripe for schizoid redevelopment and stratified class topographies.

Cubicle Revolutionary, a monument to aspiration seeded in the melancholy of capitalistic doom, is a memorial in wait. Greene registers the social exhaustion in a JP Morgan umbrella, Carrera marble, police uniform stars and a solicitation for the sale of one’s home. And resting is not easy on the bench.

1.Big Apple was coined in the 20s but gained popularity in the 70s as part of a campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, now NYC & Company, the city’s official marketing organization. Similarly, the “I Love New York” campaign began in 1977 at the behest of the New York State Department of Commerce.
Written by Noah Barker

Andrew J. Greene (b. 1988, Lake Forest, IL) has recently presented one and two person exhibitions at U.S. Blues, Brooklyn; Muscle Beach, Portland; Michael Thibault, Los Angeles; Bed Stuy Love Affair, Brooklyn as well as group exhibitions at Tomorrow, New York; Balice Hertling, Paris; and Galerie Bernhard, Zurich. Greene recently co-curated the exhibition “Bad Faith” at James Fuentes, New York and “Bad Influence” at Michael Thibault, Los Angeles.