2003, "Galerie du Jour: The most interesting place is someplace else"

"Art created another scene exclusive of the real one." -Jean Baudrillard

Recently at Galerie du Jour, agnés b. offered the group show "What about New York?: A New New York Scene." This exhibition brought together artists Cool Anonymous, Kenneth Cappello, Dan Colen, Brian Degraw, Pia Dehne, David Ellis, Young Kim, Jose Parla, Kai Regan, and Rosstar. Imperial crest maker Ryan McGuiness and fellow Ryan, photographer McGinley, were also presented. Dash Snow shared Polaroids of people getting hurt and throwing up at parties in Brooklyn. The artist collective K48 - 3TeenageRebel created "The Bedroom Show," another consideration of a teenager's room with beanbags, books, trophies and video games. Care Bear drawings and decorated skateboards are attached to the walls. Kid America presents a video of driving around Manhattan listening to Motown and some head to toe shots of what his friends are wearing. The combined energy of the artists is impressive. You cannot help but walk away thinking that being young, talented and impetuous is the best fun.

The show's title claims a new scene, that this art is THE art of the moment, at the gallery of the day. Rather than a new scene however, the opening was scenesters young and old. It wasn't the scene of Paris, or New York, or contemporary art but a combination that had a je ne sais quoi of passionate ambivalence. The gallery book had tons of "J'adore New York." One comment in French asked how this show was possible without including Harmony Korine, perhaps because the exhibition feels like it is second or third generation Larry Clark.

The gallery offered the best answer however, of what the "new New York scene" was really about. agnés b. is perhaps one of the most ardent supporters of contemporary art and has brought many otherwise limited projects to their full completion. But the title of this show makes a claim on a city. Like a corporation covering up sweat shops, agnés certifies in her press that even though some of the artists may tell you that they are from North Carolina or Korea, they are all really "New Yorkers." So this show is selling New York as an international place where young people come together. And who is to say the self absorbed indifference of these young New York artists is not authentic? agnés writes that "inspiring themselves from the world around them, punk-rock, hip-hop, skateboarding.....they create new codes and references, in which they integrate their games and parties, jokes but also the difficulties of their lives." This is authentic but unfortunately, not specific to New York, nor that new. Isn't the preoccupation of the artists and this exhibition merely unbridled adolescence, a placeless, heightened combination of emotion, sensitivity, sexuality, rejection, stylistic expression and false (though at times sincere) confidence?

In a constant search for the new, we are always on the look out for what has never been seen before. The new New York scene is however like many others. But just because it is not new does not mean it is not worth consideration. Kids all over the world, even in Paris, skateboard, go to parties and listen to music and have been for years. Without their photos at the agnés b.show we must ask - where are their parties and art exhibitions? In Paris, there is Ecole des Beaux Arts that is about five centuries old. Last summer they had a great young artists exhibition called "Art is Secondary." The exhibition asked the complicated question, "why is art less important than things like survival?" When you are hungry or homeless, art is secondary. It can also be a vehicle for communicating the human condition. The experience is primary and the art is a secondary site for it, much like the case of a Dash Snow Polaroid. It is by not being new but by being human that the New York scene triumphs.

A New York scene in a Paris gallery is largely one culture's fascination for another. The so called "new" New York is for Paris what Paris was, and sometimes still is, for New York. Cities are not only places but ongoing myths of another world with other possibilities. This exhibition also happens at a moment when global media awareness encourages the belief that the most interesting event is always happening somewhere else, even if it is just throwing up.