Greene Naftali
On view at MoMA | TONY COKES, RACHEL HARRISON, WALTER PRICE, MICHAEL SMITH, DIAMOND STINGILY
On view at MoMA | RACHEL HARRISON, WALTER PRICE, TONY COKES, DIAMOND STINGILY | MICHAEL SMITH
Greene Naftali artists on view at MoMA | Ongoing
Museum of Modern Art, New York
TONY COKES in Collection: 1970s–Present | Gallery 208
Cokes’s 1992 work The Book of Love is now on view in MoMA's gallery 208, in a group presentation titled "History and into Being."
From the museum:
"During the 1990s, as issues of identity and representation emerged in mainstream discourse under the banner of multiculturalism, many artists resisted interpretations of their work that lacked a nuanced understanding of their race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. For many of the Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and queer artists shown in this gallery, existing outside the bounds of dominant societies became a way to construct new forms of belonging under the weight of exclusionary social systems. Drawing on a diverse range of influences, from civil rights movements to Indigenous spiritual practices, these artists mobilized feelings of loss and otherness to contend with violence—both historical and ongoing—and foreground counternarratives of resistance, care, affinity, and survival."
RACHEL HARRISON in Collection: 1970s–Present | Gallery 207
Harrison’s 1997 work No Menus is now on view in MoMA's gallery 207, in a group presentation titled "Assembly."
From the museum:
"The sculptures in this gallery are often referred to as ‘assemblages.’ Making an assemblage—which involves combining like and unlike things found in the everyday world rather than creating entirely anew—can be a political gesture…. Although many of the artworks on display were made in the late 1980s and early 1990s—a period of dissent against decades of conservative government in the United States—the concerns they raise remain urgent."
WALTER PRICE in Collection: 1970s–Present | Gallery 209
Price’s 2020–21 painting Races on the Sea is now on view in MoMA’s gallery 209, in a group presentation titled “Objects of Desire.”
From the museum:
“Touching on themes of legibility and identity, the artworks in this gallery pose the question: What roles do desire and history play in how we understand and recognize each other? Drawing from literary texts, personal narratives, and references from the past, the artists on view here transform their sources to consider the promise of human relationships and reflect on the pain of fraught histories—particularly around Blackness. These acts of transformation open up a spectrum of experiences, as well as invite viewers to bring their own desires to the experience of looking."
MICHAEL SMITH in Collection: 1970s–Present | Gallery 204
Smith's 1983 work Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar is on view in MoMA's gallery 204.
From the museum:
“For over four decades, Michael Smith has produced videos, performances, and installations that feature his hapless middle-class persona, Mike, as a means of examining American culture and media. This work is based on a US government plan—issued in 1980, against the backdrop of Reagan-era Cold War politics—for a home fallout shelter that doubles as a snack bar. In Smith’s vision, Mike’s bunker, built in his suburban basement, is overstocked with ‘survival ration crackers’ and canned food, as well as records, games, an easy chair, and liquor bottles.
This environment underscores the absurdity of pursuing recreation and leisure while living under the threat of annihilation. Mike appears in drawings, the video playing on the television, and an arcade game (one of the first created by a visual artist) in which he repeatedly carries cinder blocks down stairs to construct the shelter before the ‘big one drops.’ A metaphor for nuclear war, the game is programmed to be unwinnable.
DIAMOND STINGILY in Collection 1970s–Present
Stingily’s 2021 series Entryways is now on view in MoMA’s gallery 201, in a group presentation of works titled “Holding Space.”
“Without a way to name our pain, we are also without the words to articulate our pleasure,” wrote the cultural theorist bell hooks in 1992. Confronting the challenge of representing the complexities of contemporary Black experiences that hooks described, the artists in this gallery present works that cross the threshold between comfort and grief, and between personal narrative and collective space.