What is there to say about the 2015 edition of “Greater New York” that hasn’t been said about any number of exhibitions intent on bringing some kind of definition to the dizzying state of contemporary art? Yeah, sure, this variant of the once-every-five-years pseudo-Biennial is emphatically New York-centric, particularly with numerous pieces dedicated to the city’s changing landscape. It’s also less smitten with the latest batch of bright young things. “Opportunities for younger artists,” the press release avers, “ . . . have grown alongside a burgeoning interest in artists who may have been overlooked in the histories of their time.” If this was cause enough to include works by artists as diverse, accomplished, and of a certain age as Robert Bordo, Robert Kushner, Joyce Robins, Nancy Shaver, and Rosalind Solomon, well, that’s all to the good. Dead artists are given a berth in Long Island City as well: among them, Alvin Baltrop, Rudy Burckhardt, Scott Burton, and Gordon Matta-Clark, whose photographs of industrial spaces punctuate the galleries. All of which is an attempt at satisfying—or engendering—the viewer’s “desire for the new and nostalgia for that which it displaces.”
So why does “Greater New York” feel like more of the same—that is to say, an undifferentiated amalgam of poses, politics, and attitudes? Peg it on too many cooks in the kitchen, if you’d like. Four curators, along with an additional pair of curators who have organized an accompanying series of live events, all but guarantee an