Neo-Geo

About

Neo-Geo was a label, never a group, applied from about 1986 to a handful of New York artists who approached abstraction and consumer goods with cool detachment. Several had read French theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, who argued that signs and simulations had displaced direct experience.

Peter Halley paints what he calls cells and prisons, rectangles linked by conduits, in fluorescent Day-Glo and textured Roll-a-Tex, turning geometry into a diagram of social control. Philip Taaffe remade paintings by Barnett Newman and Bridget Riley through collage and printing, and Ross Bleckner painted shimmering stripes. Ashley Bickerton built wall-mounted boxes covered in brand logos, and Meyer Vaisman painted blown-up images of canvas weave. Jeff Koons's basketballs floating in glass tanks and Haim Steinbach's shelves of shop-bought goods were often shown alongside them. Look for industrial finishes, borrowed styles and a knowing, ironic distance.