Photo Pest: Artists Make New York

What can I say? It's true, or maybe it used to be.

Plenty of non-New Yorkers were on view at PS1, the MoMA satellite in Long Island City that's free for residents. Yto Barrada, scattered her building block sculptures in the courtyard. She calls the commissioned work "Le Grand Soir (The Big Night)."

"Fistful of Love," the first museum show for photographer Reynaldo Rivera, drew me to PS1. His work, shot in Los Angeles and Mexico, where he was born, reminded me of Nan Goldin's with its (mostly vanished) demimonde vibe.

"Patron, Silver Lake Lounge" (1995)

"La Plaza" (1997)

You barely can see Rivera behind the lens in this photo at the right. Now in his early 60s, he once hung out in a lot of gay clubs and befriended more than one Latinx drag queen.

Paquita and Reynaldo Rivera, Le Bar (1997)

Somehow I can't imagine them hosting library story hours. They employed soulful transgression in service of tips, not acceptance.

Traditional weaving techniques are enhanced by digital technology in Melissa Cody's "Webbed Skies." The fourth-generation Navajo artist also updates her work with pop cultural references.

"Scaling the Caverns" (detaill, 2023)

Cody's Germantown Revival style originates from wool blankets manufactured in the Pennsylvania town of the same name, given by the U.S. government to indigenous Americans when they were expelled from their native territories in the mid-19th century.

"Power Up" by (detail, 2023)

The Navajos tore up the blankets and used the wool to create their own textiles in a subversive act of reclamation. But Cody tweaks her culture, too; this work depicts a taboo reptile--associated with bad omens and health problems--in four colors that evoke Navajo sacred land.

"Path of the Snake" (2013)

Somehow, I managed to miss the James Turrell room on previous visits. He actually lived in the museum while he created "Meeting," one of his early Skyspaces, during the late 1970s.

The work encourages visitors to look at the framed sky, not their i-Phones.

It's a contemplative place, closed during stormy weather.

Hands down, PS1 has the most interesting stairwells.

Most of the work in "Hard Ground" was too abstract for my taste but I did enjoy the back story of Jerry the Marble Faun, a Brooklyn boy. The budding sculptor was nicknamed by "Little Edie" Beale when he did odd jobs for her and her sister at Grey Gardens in the early 1970s, when the Maysles brothers were filming their classic documentary. He also worked as an assistant to Wayland Flowers whose performances with Madame, a puppet, delighted New York City cabaret audiences during the same period.

"Tecumseh" (2007-14)

Given my affinity for bicycles and the role feet play in powering them, I decided to leave mine in this photo of rings cast from the steel of a smelted Citi Bike. Although the work purports to comment--in artspeak--on "the cycles and circulations of property relations that manifest through simple everyday forms," I think the rings also offers an excellent tool for shackling clueless cyclists who go the wrong way.

"Always Something to Remind Me" by Dora Budor (2023)

Untitled by Gianna Surangkanjanajai (partial, 2024)

Filipina-American artist Pacita Abad, whose participation in anti-Marcos demonstrations forced her to flee Manila for New York at the age of 26, provided the "wow factor" of this PS1 visit.

"African Mephisto" (1981)

Abad, who died two decades ago at the age of 64, painted often enormous, almost always colorful, canvases before embellishing them with fabric and other objects--including cowrie shells and buttons--in a process known as "trapunto."

"Marcos & His Cronies" (1985-95)

Sadly, this has had the effect of marginalizing her work in the art world because trapunto is more often associated with women's crafts, like quilting and embroidery.