Party High, Sweet Chariot

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Friday, a friend invited me to go to Creative Time's latest event, an opening for a show inspired by the High Line, after we supped, and I said yes. It was only an 80% yes, these things often turn out to be hideous: a hundred people occupancy but the event-throwers invite 10,000 to see it, creating a fight at the door. Still, the promise to see the one Matta-Clark film I haven't seen yet was exciting enough to get me walking in the rain.

Read about the show by clicking for more...

There were only about two hundred people there, and they were all jammed into two lines. We stood in the wrong line, and got shuffled into the parking lot with trash barrels full of ice and beer and some DJ spinning really important music and a bunch of drunk and stone kids running around. Wrong line.

As I was standing in the second line, I noticed how orderly this line was. People were signing releases, there was little hype, and everyone seemed ten years older. I had entered the Art Lover's line.

The builidng is an old meatpacking warehouse, and the site of the new Dia, complete with loading platform at the level of the High Line. The artworks were considered, curated, and special, relating directly to the transformation happening around this area, and with the HL park. Several were more animated by the lack of sunlight, the smell of long-gone meat, and the strange confluence of night-walking Art Lovers rummaging around, stairs that were barracaded with plywood sheets, and artworks both new and old. The artworks traced a short history of inhabiting spaces like this, from GM-C's work to the latest film by the ever-brilliant Saskia Olde Wolbers. Most importantly, all of the artworks were part of the space, not set in the precious jewelbox of a museum. The experience reminded me of PS1 before MoMA got a hold of it, like anything could happen here and no one would mind. Let the water drip on the painting, that's part of the experience.

The projector with the Matta-Clark film was busted, and so the filmstrip was just sitting there, in the dark. The glint of chemical colored greens and blues sneaked through the dark a little. GM-C would have laughed at me.

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