A secret history of New York as told through classified ads and advertising posters salvaged from the city's streets.

 

From the end of the Reagan era to the beginning of Covid, New York–based artist  Kenneth Goldsmith collected hundreds of classified ads and posters from the streets of the city. Hilarious, offbeat, absurd and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful, the images are united by their unpredictability as well as their total lack of utility.

Whether or not they intentionally drew from the aesthetics of Art Brut, Cubism or concrete poetry, they align with the basic thesis of artistic modernity: to take an object and to divert it from any practical aim.

Goldsmith traces almost 40 years of American history as told from the margins, through his personal collection of objects made by "street poets and other visionaries" and reflects on the boundaries between art and advertisement, and the notion of insider and outsider art.