EXPO 1: New York Opens at MoMA PS1

Today we welcome a new contributor to We Heart Astoria – Megan Green will be writing about the arts here on WHA, and she’s off to a great start with this piece on the EXPO 1: New York exhibit, newly opened at MoMA PS1. Welcome, Megan! -Meg

MoMA PS1, in a unique partnership with VW, opened the EXPO 1: New York exhibit Friday, May 12. Spurred by the urgency of the tragic effects of Hurricane Sandy on the Rockaways, a vibrant, diverse exhibit of ecology-inspired art, featuring modules, interventions, solo projects, and group exhibitions, is on the three floors – and the roof – of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City.

Colony, opposite the VW Dome in the courtyard, is a small commune where architects, artists, and others will live together in salvaged trailers during the entire exhibit. Inside, the main show ranges in impact from Mark Dion’s macabre sculpture of tree with taxidermied animals painted black to depict the horror of an oil spill, to a wonder-inspiring installation by Olafur Iliasson, Your waste of time, a room with large pieces of ice from an Icelandic glacier.

There is also a cinema that will feature films and other media, and ProBio, a rather sci fi room with tech-based art that you experience as several Roombas vacuum at your feet.

After seeing all of its “Dark Optimism” -themed works, the galleries of Ansel Adams’ famous photographs – in an exhibit titled The Politics of Contemplation – seem almost anomalous, but make perfect sense.

The exhibit is well-balanced and immersive. Triple Canopy is running Speculations (“The future is________”), and has a schedule of daily classes with such notables as Marina Abramovich, Agnes Dennes, and MoMA’s own curator-at-large Klaus Biesenbach. The classes are all open to the public from May 13 to July 28. Then take the elevator up to the roof garden with vegetable-producing plants.

EXPO 1: New York will be open until September 2 at MoMA PS1.

MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101, (718) 784-2084, momaps1.org