Charley and David Zwirner are pleased to present the exhibition "Bright Lights Big City" on the occasion of the publication of Charley 03.
Charley is a contemporary art publication series edited by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick, and designed by The Purtill Family Business. Charley 03 is a time machine, bringing out the past and casting it into a new light, presenting close to one hundred artists from the '80s and early '90s. Playing with memory and amnesia, Charley 03 presents–in a new frame–the works that have shaped two decades of contemporary art.
For the exhibition "Bright Lights, Big City," the publication comes to life presenting works by artists who were very prominent in New York in the '80s and early '90s. Suspended between nostalgia and archaeology, "Bright Lights, Big City" writes a small history of whatifs: a scenario that speaks about the instability of taste, as it undermines the hierarchies of art history. Yesterday begins tomorrow.
"Bright Lights, Big City" exists in a series of other group exhibitions held at David Zwirner in the past: "Sampler" (1994); "Someone else with my Fingerprints" (1997); "Conceptual Photography from the 1960s and 1970s" (1998); "Video library" (1998); "I Love New York" (2001) and most importantly "New York ca. 1975" (summer 2001). "New York ca. 1975" attempted to bring together a group of artists who were working with often new and diverse media–after the dematerialization of the art object–in the center for the proliferation of these new media: New York City. And like "New York ca. 1975" and "I Love New York," the exhibition "Bright Lights, Big City" continues the tribute to and incursion into the story of the city as reflected through its extraordinary history of art. With these shows, David Zwirner is discovering the future and excavating the past.