Group Exhibition: 260 Madison

260 Madison is an artist-run exhibition occupying a crevice in the machinery of Midtown Manhattan: a vacant Duane Reade storefront and the entire 23,000-square-foot former office floor above. Working across sculpture, new media, and video, more than fifty artists intervene in a site shaped by the spatial condition Rem Koolhaas diagnosed as Junkspace. On the lower level, art takes the place of discount makeup and off-brand painkillers, set against toxic-green paint and under surviving lightboxes reading “WHAT I NEED NOW” and “HOW I LOOK,” echoing the propaganda revealed by the sunglasses in John Carpenter’s They Live.

To access the upper floor, security escorts visitors through the storefront to the 14th level—a post-cubicle necropolis marooned amid the nine-to-five racket of fully operative office towers. Exposed HVAC, ripped-out toilets, and corporate-logo wallpaper house art that examines the systems organizing contemporary life—from control, surveillance, AI, and extraction to the material and architectural structures that shape how we work, move, and live. Across the floor, familiar materials, objects, and technologies are dismantled, reconstructed, or made strange, while social-media interfaces dice human life into users, consumers, gig workers, and data. 260 Madison holds two scenarios in tension: systems becoming autonomous from human life, and life stubbornly hacking and breaking these systems in a relentless act of love and self-preservation.

Curated by DemonLovers Inc. and Shaina Tabak.

Artists: Adam Basanta, Alisa Berger, Alison Nguyen, angelicism01, Anthony Discenza, Baris Cavusoglu, Ben Gould, Ben Shirken, Brian Oakes, Cato Ouyang, Char Jeré, Chris Crary, Clare Koury, Dahlia Bloomstone, Dana Dawud, David Humphrey, DemonLovers Inc., Dexter Barker-Glenn, Eva & Franco Mattes, Eugene Jung, Grayson Cox, Greg Carideo, Ivana Dama, Jennifer Coates, John Dillard, Jon Kessler, Josh Kline, Kari Cholnoky, Kristin Walsh, Kylie Mitchell, Leigh Ledare, Liz Magic Laser, Luke Murphy, Magdalena Petroni, Matt Mullican, Maya Man, Miguel Gallego, Michael Candy, Michelle Segre, Miles Scharff, Rachel Rossin, Ruba Al-Sweel, Ryan Decker, S.A. Mayer, Sarah Holloway, Sasha Fishman, Shaina Tabak, Simon Denny, Soomin Kang, Sophie Jung, Theresa Tomi Faison, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Yasue Maetake, Yehwan Song, and Zarina Nares.