Last Thursday – amidst sleet and freezing rain – I trekked to Long Island City’s artist collective Flux Factory, almost missing their inconspicuous front door, for the opening of their latest exhibition, New York, New York, New York.
Running up the stairs and out of the cold, I nearly tripped on the giant scale model of the five boroughs that takes up almost every inch of floor space in their main gallery. The best way to explore the exhibition’s fantasy space, then, was to walk up and down the city’s rivers and through its harbor, getting a close look at the individual elements while also taking in the spectacle of such an elaborate piecemeal concoction. Many artists had recreated buildings – existing, destroyed, planned and imagined – in various scales and media. Joel Morrison and Hiroshi Shafers, for instance, assembled a floating mixed media effigy of Queens’ awkwardly solitary Citibank skyscraper, bemoaning the tides of corporate invaders and gentrifiers the building foreshadows. Momoyo Torimitsu, on the other hand, conveyed a vision of the Financial District – strikingly evocative of I Am Legend, the current Will Smith capper – in a post-human future, with greenery taking over skyscrapers and an audio track of chirping birds suggesting the return of nature to Lower Manhattan.
Some of the most interesting pieces stood out by using video and audio to grab my attention, which was otherwise pretty much overwhelmed. The most charming piece of this kind – Ian Burns’ “Broadway” – mixed video, toy cars and a treadmill to convey cabs racing down Broadway in a way reminiscent of NASCAR or Tour de France TV coverage. A couple dozen toy cabs are set up on a treadmill, starting and stopping for a miniature traffic light; the head car is mounted with a miniature camera that sends a live video feed of the close-up action to a nearby monitor. The piece was a funny and less jarring replica of the absurd pace of taxi cabs careening down the city streets, tearing off the line at green lights and screeching to a halt a few blocks later.
Running up the stairs and out of the cold, I nearly tripped on the giant scale model of the five boroughs that takes up almost every inch of floor space in their main gallery. The best way to explore the exhibition’s fantasy space, then, was to walk up and down the city’s rivers and through its harbor, getting a close look at the individual elements while also taking in the spectacle of such an elaborate piecemeal concoction. Many artists had recreated buildings – existing, destroyed, planned and imagined – in various scales and media. Joel Morrison and Hiroshi Shafers, for instance, assembled a floating mixed media effigy of Queens’ awkwardly solitary Citibank skyscraper, bemoaning the tides of corporate invaders and gentrifiers the building foreshadows. Momoyo Torimitsu, on the other hand, conveyed a vision of the Financial District – strikingly evocative of I Am Legend, the current Will Smith capper – in a post-human future, with greenery taking over skyscrapers and an audio track of chirping birds suggesting the return of nature to Lower Manhattan.
Some of the most interesting pieces stood out by using video and audio to grab my attention, which was otherwise pretty much overwhelmed. The most charming piece of this kind – Ian Burns’ “Broadway” – mixed video, toy cars and a treadmill to convey cabs racing down Broadway in a way reminiscent of NASCAR or Tour de France TV coverage. A couple dozen toy cabs are set up on a treadmill, starting and stopping for a miniature traffic light; the head car is mounted with a miniature camera that sends a live video feed of the close-up action to a nearby monitor. The piece was a funny and less jarring replica of the absurd pace of taxi cabs careening down the city streets, tearing off the line at green lights and screeching to a halt a few blocks later.
The terrifying speed of gentrification, meanwhile, was the most frequently recurring theme, though some artists approached it more subtly than others. On the more explicit side of things, the exhibition’s Lounge space featured two variations on arcade games that parodying the desperate state of housing rights in the city. The first, Devrim Kadirbeyoglu’s “Gentri-why?”, lets gallery-goers – for the small fee of 25 cents – try their hand at one of those infuriating skill crane games in which the plush prizes to be picked up are cushion replicas of landmarked Williamsburg buildings. George Spencer, meanwhile, took a machine that ordinarily would distribute jawbreakers and silly little toys, and created “Block Busting.” After depositing four quarters, out rolled a plastic ball containing a chunk of concrete: now I own a little piece of land in New York!
Instead of the mediocre state of New York’s current built environment, many artists resorted to fantasy, imagining impossible buildings or bringing to life fictional ones. Among only four artworks occupying the Staten Island portion of the exhibition was Sandy Amerio’s “Fort Wadsworth.” Though on paper it sounds like a historical recreation, Amerio’s piece is actually concerned with what is under Fort Wadsworth, namely comic book superhero G.I. Joe’s headquarters. Some pages from the eponymous comic tangled in a mess of barbed wire suggested the way our knowledge of the city is tied up in our stories and experiences – both real and fictional.
With over 100 artists contributing to the exhibition, many of the pieces didn’t work as well as these. That said, the overwhelming experience of gazing across such a heterogeneous cityscape, and the satisfaction of the better individual artworks, made the not-so-good art – and the cross-tundra hike out to Long Island City – well worth the effort. Just try to go when it’s not snowing and hailing.
Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St. (betw. 37th Ave. and Northern Blvd.), 646-226-8611, fluxfactory.org.
Photographs by Benjamin Sutton.
Instead of the mediocre state of New York’s current built environment, many artists resorted to fantasy, imagining impossible buildings or bringing to life fictional ones. Among only four artworks occupying the Staten Island portion of the exhibition was Sandy Amerio’s “Fort Wadsworth.” Though on paper it sounds like a historical recreation, Amerio’s piece is actually concerned with what is under Fort Wadsworth, namely comic book superhero G.I. Joe’s headquarters. Some pages from the eponymous comic tangled in a mess of barbed wire suggested the way our knowledge of the city is tied up in our stories and experiences – both real and fictional.
With over 100 artists contributing to the exhibition, many of the pieces didn’t work as well as these. That said, the overwhelming experience of gazing across such a heterogeneous cityscape, and the satisfaction of the better individual artworks, made the not-so-good art – and the cross-tundra hike out to Long Island City – well worth the effort. Just try to go when it’s not snowing and hailing.
Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St. (betw. 37th Ave. and Northern Blvd.), 646-226-8611, fluxfactory.org.
Photographs by Benjamin Sutton.
A similar version of this article will appear on the New York Press blog on December 18, 2007.
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