Curated by Massimiliano Gioni

1993 was the worst year of my life. I barely remember it. But the sheer variety of practices represented in this walk-through time capsule—with work by Alex Bag, Art Club 2000, Matthew Barney, Kathe Burkhart, Byron Kim, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Jason Rhoades, Julia Scher, et al.—calls to mind the expansiveness and excitement of the early 1990s in New York, when aestheticism and political engagement, oblique neo-Conceptualist gestures and florid post-Pop starmongering, all shared the art world’s stage on pretty much equal footing. “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” (the title borrowed from a contemporaneous album by Sonic Youth) and its catalogue should bolster the burgeoning scholarly interest in the period, while reminding those of us who lived through it of the artworks we loved—and loved to hate—that year.

— David Rimanelli