'NY I LOVE YOU, BUT . . . ' opened last night at NYU's Gallatin Gallery curated by Keith Miller. The exhibit is on view through January 26th.

New York, I Love You, But…'
November 5, 2015 - January 26, 2016
The Gallatin Galleries
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 10-7; Saturday 11-4, Closed Sundays
Opening Reception Thursday November 5, 6-8pm
http://galleries.gallatin.nyu.edu/
For information please contact curator Keith Miller at km96@nyu.edu

The Gallatin Galleries is proud to present
New York, I Love You, But…
a collection of works in painting, photography, video, architectural proposals, sculpture, sound works, and more. This show looks at the changing nature of our city and our complicated feelings toward it, both historically and right now.

Curator’s Statement
All the arguments against it are right: too crowded, too loud, too spread out, too expensive. But also: too exciting, too energetic, too fast, too much. All superlatives. New York, I Love You, But… is a glimpse at the superlative that is New York; an audience to the internal conversation of the person pressed against the subway door, smelling something unidentifiable on the journey home from some unique and wonderful New York moment. It is a glance at the instances of excess and intimacy, humanity and wonder that define being a New Yorker. “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” (Colson Whitehead) because being a New Yorker is as much about the frenetic thrust into the present (and by that we mean the future), as it is about harboring nostalgia for a New York that’s eternally slipping away. CBGBs or Shea Stadium, Ebbets field or the Twin Towers; affordable rent or addicts in Times Square: all gone. What is lost is our city, the city that each of us individually makes through momentary encounters, reflections in the window of a cab, panoramic vistas we didn’t know existed, but became ours because that is where we fell in love, were held up, got away, and all the other endless events that create the place we call home

As part of that bifurcated experience, New York also lays out too plainly its problems. Economic disparity is nowhere so clear as on a walk through the city. A multi-million dollar pied-à-terre, not even inhabited most of the year, minutes away from a cockroach infested five-story walk up. The changes imposed upon neighborhoods blind the existing owners and tenants. A white man claims to have “settled” a part of Brooklyn, and we all know what he means: moved into a Brown space, a POC space, before the caucasian influx, made it safe for the late comer, as if it were an uninhabited desert, forgetting , of course, that he too is an invader. The admixture of race and class, ethnicity and education, location and proximity make the turbulence apparent on the surface, all too quickly. The split is everywhere, and the only ones who seem not to see it are literally above the fray, in buildings with park views that push the clouds a little bit further up

Within that constant but often unstated battle there remain the connections and crossings that fill ones day with a reminder of how strange and magical New York can be. Tourists openly marvel at acapella gospel groups on the subway, but diehard New Yorkers, too, look up with a warm recognition of talent. And on those platforms and trains, glances cross and moments had that push distant strangers into accidental intimacies. It’s not just Tinder and Grindr, OK Cupid and Bumble, but also real human bodies that meet by chance and make us murmur New York, I Love You, But…

Khalik Allah
Annie Berman
Sophie Blackall
Margaret Chandler
Nathan Fitch
Brian Foo
Joy Garnett
Suzanne Goldenberg
Nina Katchadourian
Paul McDonough
Lawrence Mesich
Ron Milewicz
Amy Park
Maddalena Polletta
Casey Ruble
Ken Schles
Terreform ONE