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ARTFORUM
http://www.artforum.com/diary/id=8937
05.10.05 Outside the Box Brooklyn
Low
expectations have been at least partly responsible for some of my happiest
experiences in art, and they didn't let me down on Saturday afternoon
when I dropped into Parker's Box, in Williamsburg, for what the invitation
had billed as a weekend "international art market." I expected
the sale of something, I guess, but all I found was a bunch of artists
sitting around talking at an art fair that was nothing short of soulful.
The artist-run gallery has survived on Williamsburg's Grand Street for
five years. To celebrate, directors Alun Williams and Allyson Spellacy
opened their doors to a funked-up fair lacking not only sales booths but
also their own artists. "It's our birthday," Williams said,
"so we just invited guests." At this parallel universe-fair,
visiting artists represented their respective galleries, rather than the
other way around. All were encouraged to make presentations specific to
the occasion. Spontaneity ruled. I met new people, saw new things. I had
my portrait taken. In other words, I had a blast.
Just inside the front door, a small television monitor displayed a video
by Guy Richards Smit (Roebling Hall), while a family sat before a makeshift
puppet theater waiting for the show to begin. A simple sign on the wall
high above the stage identified the artist as "Pattie Lee Becker
(Klaus von Nichtssagend)." Yet my eye was drawn to a corner crammed
with stuffed bunny rabbits and framed snapshots of people caught in the
instant when a camera flash makes them blink. The sign for this amusement
said, "Joyce Pensato (Galerie Anne de Villepoix)." And Joyce
was there, camera in hand. Across the room, Stefan Nikolaev (Galerie Michel
Rein) stood by an easel full of posters advertising a "smokers-only"
transatlantic flight on his "Gravy Plane," an expression of
freedom "for a world gone mad."
I laughed. I felt bewildered. It was all very 112 Greene Street—112
Greene being the freewheeling early ‘70s alternative space in SoHo
(founded by Gordon Matta-Clark and Jeffrey Lew) that later became White
Columns. But this was definitely not the ‘70s. There were nearly
forty artists in this show, spread over three locations, including Lunarbase,
down the street from Parker's Box, and Commune, a spacey beauty parlor
next door. The elusive David Hammons was around, somewhere, as was Mike
Ballou, Nayland Blake, and Ted Victoria. Other artists kept changing wigs
and costumes and parading out in the street. This was Brooklyn.
On their wall, Prospect Heights housemates Oliver Herring (Max Protetch)
and Peter Krashes (Derek Eller) had photo-documented their careers and
were mapping connections between them, many they had only just discovered.
Diana Cooper (Postmasters) tacked parts of a work-in-progress to another
wall and sat at her table drawing and talking at once. Brian Maguire (Kerlin
Gallery, Dublin) told stories about the remarkable lithographs he had
made from drawings by mental patients with whom he works when he's not
teaching at Ireland's National College of Art and Design. Hajoe Moderegger
and Franziska Lamprecht, or eteam (Momenta Art), traced visitors' portraits
in projected light for later display on a website, and Artists Space kept
a poker game going in the basement. Somehow it all felt uplifting—and
useful. At Commune, you could get your hair done and talk to Linda Ganjian
(Eyewash Gallery) about her partly edible sculptures or to Philippe Meste
(Le Cube Ensemble) about the shares he was selling in a store of frozen
sperm, for which he also seemed to be accepting donations. (There might
have been a language barrier here.)
So let the Chelsea galleries bring out big guns like Jasper Johns, Richard
Prince, and Gregory Crewdson to entertain collectors in town for the spring
auctions. That's fine. Parker's Box offered a genuine alternative to their
increasingly homogenized sheen, trading high stakes for high spirits and
collectibility for down home community. And that was even finer.
—Linda Yablonsky
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