Wooster Collective

Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2006 @ 02:46 in Culture by Michael Vazquez

Adding to the annals of famous shows and last hoorahs, Sunday December 17th will be remembered as the day when Wooster Collective held the final show at11 Spring which found 35 artists from several continents and eras getting up over every square inch.

The line around three of the four sides of the block was itself a work of art, both conceptually – as a statement on the indoor show of mainly outdoor artists; the reverting to the fetishism of the artist as savior + gallery as temple for which the public lines up; and literally – with one in every few heads online at some point or another getting up on the famous wall that changes hues like a giant primal chunk of mineral in the rain, which is ultimately what any building is. “Go back to school!” snipped one person bitchily, in response to a quick silver throw up.

We’re in the final hours of a corner which is to be transformed from an intricate ongoing collage, to a condominium, and all that implies. Yet another gentrification casualty, blah, blah, blah as the graphic on the circuit box read. Having just gotten my electricity (or leccy as my British girl tells me) re-connected, this piece is resonating nicely with me. I’d love to see somebody start doing con art using Con Ed’s logo.

Wooster co-founder Marc Schiller was about as harried as one could get at the door, enough so to deny me entrance, relegating me to back of the line status, despite my mentioning the publications and wire services I write for, and even after his kind wife pulled him aside to ask on my behalf.

I found my spot on the back of the line after a dizzying walk around three sides of the block which felt like walking backwards and forwards at the same time. I knew, as did the others, that admission into the show was in greater doubt with every passing minute. Someone approached me asking permission to photograph my sneakers for their blog. Despite being voted best dressed in eighth grade, and a jr. prom king, I am a man in revolt, no longer down with the metrosexuality that I’d pioneered at 11, which I’d grown tired of since post-adolescence. Yet it was cool to be singled out again for my style. Go New Balance.

But I was still nervous about getting in. I decided to go and trade the MMJ DVD I got in the mail. I love this band (Go Bonnaroo!) but BMG once again got funny with the anti piracy thing and the DVD plays in trippy slow motion on my computer, which is cool, but I need the bucks more. I asked the persons behind me and in front of me – and this is key! – to hold my place. On the way to St. Mark’s I see the bare arms of CBGB’s awning, its wiry frame emerging from The Bowery like branches on a winter-pruned tree.

I came back three dollars richer, but judging by the where the guy with the huge afro that I used as a progress marker was still standing, both groups holding my place had gone! The back of the line was no longer an option, so I went back to the front entrance to re-press my case, and there at the threshold of the pearly gate were the gentlemen who were in front of me. They’d somehow successfully cut the line well ahead of where I’d left them, and the girl who’d allowed them to do so was hesitant about letting me in at first but they vouched for me (honor amongst art thieves, thank you!) and she acquiesced, noting poetically that I owed her 3.5 hours of her life. Before I could think of a flirty suggestion on how to spend that time, we were hurled into the galleryswarm like salmon on a conveyor belt getting dropped down a chute. We were inside the chocolate factory, Charlie.

As is my want I hung out by the DJ for a second, NYC party stalwarts Soundlab were representing, with a box-as-amp rig! Been a long minute since I’ve seen this set-up. I meet Dan Bergeron, who hits me off with his very last sheet of stickers, as seen in the photo. Both of the girls partly in the image asked vehemently to trade their snowboarding stickers for my edition and nearly everyone I walked past asked me where I’d got these stickers. When Bergeron asked me how much an ad page costs in URB, I was reminded of how much things have changed in the relationship between artists and media, with savvy artists collectives. When I told him I smelt weed as we exchanged contact info, he said it was shit he had in his pockets and I grew instantly covetous – this would be a great show to go through high. But I was just glad to be inside and grateful for the stickers.

I make it through the galleryswarm registering everything but not really noticing, in the haze of excited absorption. Even though I wasn’t even stoned, amidst the wall collages, I felt a bit like I’d been miniaturized and placed inside the Photoshop files of an artist’s computer. The sun was going down and it was well past 5pm, closing time. The panel scheduled for 3 pm had long been canceled – was in fact a laughably unstageable proposition, given the phenomenal turnout. Just before the magic corrugated metal garage gate closed like something in SG-1 and the entire block-long line was denied entry, it became clear that my valued and dear photographer Derori Gila Loral wouldn’t be entering. But back at the door, the increasingly cagey founder wouldn’t even let me come to the front to get her camera, now that I was inside!! Nonetheless, my intrepid veteran lens person navigated the lineswarm and handed her cam off to me like an expert QB on 4th and goal. Thanks.

Inside people are shuffling past, kids ask everyone they see to put something in their piece books, it’s rarely clear or important where one piece starts and another ends, the odd bits on the stairs are as fun and in this case as relevant as the larger works by these various self-created mobile artists. The steps read: “No not another privileged hipster, “He comes from a broken home but he made good with art”, “They’re giving it away for free?”

I stood on the side of one piece which required the viewer to pull open two doors labeled “Success”, and it was interesting to learn that the overwhelming majority of viewers did not open the door but instead moved timidly on to the next piece. I don’t know what I would’ve done because the door was open when I approached it. When the door reading “Success” was opened, it revealed a wall of shirts with their backs cutout indicating presumably, backstabbing. Rough but true. As these images indicate, in addition to the beauty, the anger in the show was certainly useful and the decidedly anti-materialistic tone was resonant, which calls to mind that here is something to be said about the nature of the show’s origin.

The show was created as a last hurrah because this building is in the process of being sold and a touch of the aristocratic embrace on the part of the developers seems at play, no? Like pre-damage control. So whether the spirit of this building will be calling anyone back when it goes clean will be interesting to watch. Those looking for extra credit might do a lil' history homework and find an edifice in which George Washington actually slept, in virtually the same nabe, but just north of Houston.

Walking home I notice even more new stores in SoHo. The dolls in the Chanel display capture my eye, in their (albeit, sanitized) similarity to the spirit of the outdoor art, like the human baby thingy, just slicker. In fact I think these Chanel dolls were designed by Kaws. Neighborhoods sure do change.

When the topic of gentrification in NYC comes to mind, most think of the death of the East Village, but if you look back to the prior era, long before it was populated by Sunglass Huts and Armani Exchange and galleries selling way overvalued art to suburban doctors, SoHo was a rat-infested loft haven for a diverse group of artists through several decades; video pioneer Nam June Paik; The New York Dolls, who held a residency of sorts at the Mercer Arts Center; Keith Haring.

After Chanel, I pass a sculpture of a famous B&W photo of hi-rise construction workers and the smaller scale models for sale, and I think of how everybody just wants their own piece of this city.

 

View the Wooster show in photographs: www.flickr.com/photos/vazqueznyc

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