A worthy and adventurous remit indeed. But is the State of the Art living up to it? Well, no one is going to deny that the large arrays of artists featured from New York are going through the motion. Gandalf Gavan’s Untitled 2009, a sizeable, bubble-wrapped neon sculpture mounted above a Pollockesque splatter painting (with the six, seven and eight of diamonds chucked on top for good measure) on the floor certainly makes a statement in the gallery. By the movement of the electrons, which de-ionize a noble gas and ‘kick off photons’ Gavan wishes to raise the audience’s awareness of ‘the arrival of light into the eye and how your mind constitutes it into a generative, normative mode of what we call reality.’

Indeed. However, although some jaded critics might argue that the idealism/materialism/socially constructed paradigm is getting a little worn, Gavan’s intricate and phantasmagorical design manages to sufficiently engage one’s appreciation, even without delving into the deeper realms of speculation on the nature of mediated reality. Not sure if the floor bit is really necessary though…

Tamy Ben-Tor’s The End of Art and Normal, both video installations on TVs set side by side supplied with headphones, certainly managed to alienate me at first. The End of Art features Ben-Tor in two roles, as an art critic and as the artist. Normal Features her as an arts administrator. The videos are shot in the style of Bennett’s Talking Heads (or now I come to think of it, more like Max Headroom), but anybody expecting Thora Hird being whimsical is going to get a nasty surprise. All the characters are ranting like they’re at the peak of a major coke jag, Ben-Tor’s critic declaiming the end of the artist and how she really doesn’t like art. The artist character appears (I think) to be adopting a very bad oriental accent and gleefully boasts about how easy putting together art is. A dig at Yoko Ono, perhaps? Whatever, I hope this doesn’t rebound on Urbis and Ben-Tor like Father Ted Crilly’s attempt at impersonating Craggy Island’s Asians did on him.

Normal’s arts administrator managed to keep up the 1000-words-a-minute babble about nothing much and was, like The End of Art, actually rather compelling. You don’t want to watch it (or more to the point, listen to it) at first, but there’s something about the dream-like Lynchian perversity of it all that is extremely moreish. Both pieces are actually extremely clever. And they will stay burned in my subconscious for ever. I think that’s a good thing…

Quick and more straightforwardly positive thumbs-ups for Michael Schall’s superb graphite-based pieces, of which Digging the largest hole on Earth and Smoke Factory Malfunction were exquisitely rendered comments on our industrial achievements and environmental catastrophes. Also eTeam’s Second Life Dumpster and Jennie C. Jone’s wonderfully delicate cassette tape ‘drawings’ are highlights. Other featured artists, such as Joe Winter and Shelter Serras’s foam sculptures also merit space, but I have none left, other to tell you the following good news:

State of The Art is a bold and comprehensive attempt to showcase the strength and originality of the talent coming out of NY. It’s a varied, extensive and most importantly, exciting exhibition that merits serious and repeated visiting. Urbis have really hit the spot with this and kudos is due.