The show “Manhattan, mixed use: Photography and other artistic practices from 1970 to the present ” will run until Sept. 27 as part of PhotoEspaña 2010 The exhibit is organized by the de National museum of art the Reina Sofía, curated by Lynne Cooke and Douglas Crimp and it can be found 4th floor of the Sabatini building.

The exhibition’s title refers to zoning and land use, and in particular neighbourhoods or buildings in which there is a combination of commercial and residential functions, which is common in New York. This transformation started in the 70s and legalized a de facto situation in which the artists had appropriated factories and warehouses in partially de-industrialized areas for use as studios and living spaces.

This shift generated real artistic communities and eventually turned Soho into the epicentre for contemporary artists and art galleries. Rapid gentrification mixed with artistic flow brought galleries, restaurants and spaces for performances to the area.

The exhibition includes more than 20 artists among them Alvin Baltrop, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Dara Birnbaum, Jennifer Boland, Stefan Brecht, Matthew Buckingham, Tom Burr, Roy Colmer, Moyra Davey, Terry Fox, Bernard Guillot, David Hammons, Sharon Hayes, Peter Hujar, Joan Jonas, Louise Lawler, Zoe Leonard, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Robert Longo, Vera Lutter, and Danny Lyon.

Photographers like David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar began firing their cameras on the streets where they lived and moved, while artists like Gordon Matta-Clark or Joan Jonas or editor/gallery owner/ curator Willoughby Sharp were attracted by immense unregulated and blocks of abandoned buildings near areas that had been demolished to build the World Trade Center and Battery Park City and nearby Hudson River piers.

Bernard Guillot, like many foreigners who visited the city at that time was fascinated by the solitude and the clandestine activities hidden in those spaces. While Guillot was concentrated on the West Side and in particular at 12th Avenue, Thomas Struth, came from Germany and gravitated towards the desolate streets of Manhattan and its neighbourhoods.

There are also audiovisual works such as Static (2009), a digital projection of by the British artist Steve McQueen, consisting of seven-minute loop which features a camera moving in a spiral with a soundtrack, where there was intermittent incessant hum of the helicopter. Glenn Ligon, one of the few artists in this exhibition who was born and raised in the city, provides a very personal view on Manhattan with an almost laconic textual tour of the various apartments where he lived during four decades, charting his relationship with this space.

Enjoy the summer in Madrid apartments, take a walk down to the Reina Sofía Museum and enjoy the images and sensations of another great place, Manhattan.