CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/29/2015

No Problem

"The '80s, as they flowed into the '90s, appear from our vantage as perhaps the last period in which artists, critics, and curators, the exhibitions and the writing around art, led the way and were of consequence," Bob Nickas writes in No Problem: Cologne/New York, David Zwirner Books' fresh examination of art from the polar epicenters of the late-8os art world. "Art was driven by what was gained and what was lost. There were heroes and villains. People chose sides and art served its cause, addressing the larger culture within which it coexisted, at times uneasily. Artists saw themselves implicated within an image world that was fast transforming into an industry, and art would once again have a self-critical function. You were aware that you were present in the moment, that you were part of it or wanted to be, that there was a collectively driven force. Everyone was offering each other a set of possibilities and challenges, and direction. And so those works and those shows, the writing and debate, they were guideposts that pointed to where you were heading and where you had come from." When God Created Rock, He Must Have Been Horny (Rock Music III) (1984), is by Albert Oehlen, whose work is currently on view at the New Museum.