It was a gloomy day, again. Thick leaden low skies, damp chilly temps. Barren winter trees. Or, actually, it was the winter solstice. The shortest day, longest night, of the year. Everything looks brown or gray or beige, like the concrete sidewalks, dark gray asphalt, neked trees, imploded plants. The only color is in the changing traffic light at the corner.
Anyway, since a couple of weeks I had agreed to feed the garden cat on Saturday and Sunday evenings, so I had to go out anyway. And wanted to do that before it got dark, which was now a little after 4pm. And wanted to go out anyway to get some air. And anyway to get a few groceries at Whole Foods on Houston Street. The plan was to grab a Citibike at the corner of 6th & B.
I got there and no bikes to be had. Strode to the next station at 2nd & B. Same thing. Mounting frustration, at Citibike for not balancing the stations. A constant vexation. So marched along 2nd Street between Avenue B & Avenue A where I rarely pass by, then along the long block of mostly parking lot between Avenue A & 1st Avenue, then straight along to the more pleasantly interesting block between 1st & 2nd Avenue, along the long expanse of the ancient Marble Cemetery (New York's oldest).
I crossed the street halfway along and walked past Anthology Film Archives, that wonderful really old building on the corner, which looks like a bunker -- which, God forbid, should come on to the radar of one of the newfangled real estate tycoon sharks gobbling up the hood.
By this time I was near the Citibike station I would have ridden the bike to (at 2nd Street & 2nd Avenue), and checked with a quick glance to see if any bikes were there, as I would want one to ride one home after shopping. Saw maybe 1 or 2 -- not a good chance of any being there when I got done.
It was one of those occasions when every passerby, and their snippets of conversation, annoys me. I just don't want to walk lockstep with anyone beside me. I navigated my way down 2nd Avenue, past the seasonal and temporary Christmas tree sellers that descend on the city every year after Thanksgiving -- I think from Canada, maybe with Quebecoise accents ... The trees are nice, but I'm sad to see they are grown and chopped down for this brief purpose, somewhat like the meat industry. They crowd the sidewalk. I hurried along to the corner and waited for the various lights to change to cross Houston. I know all the traffic patterns and know just when to step forth ...
It seemed the whole store was full of shoppers with carts. Being a Sunday afternoon I guess that's normal. I swung around the premises and grabbed the stuff I was looking for, then headed for the checkout. Strangely, almost no one in line. I packed the groceries into my backpack, then back out into the street and back across Houston.
While waiting for the light to change I looked west and saw Keith McNally's corner place at Bowery & Houston with a new name "Cherche Midi" -- used to be a pizza place ("Pulino's"), now it's French. Must go there sometime.
Back past the tree folk, up the next block, past the old guy who unpacks his horde of weird decrepit stuff on the sidewalk at 2nd & 2nd -- in front of that defunct restaurant that seems cursed -- he sets it out lovingly and hopes for a sale -- around the corner to the bikes.
There's a couple of Citibike workers there, hauling bikes away to their van. They tell me that the section of bikes I'm heading to aren't working and point to another group (since I went shopping a whole crop of bikes showed up). The one guy is really friendly and I tell him there are never enough bikes available in the East Village around Tompkins Square Park and how it drives me nuts. How I had to actually walk all the way over. He tells me that 1/2 the bikes are in the shop right now. New York City is exercising stringent standards of safety and performance. We chat for awhile.
I unlock a bike and adjust the seat and secure my stuff and head back east, where I came from. Down 2nd Street, past the cemetery, and swing left around the corner on to the 1st Avenue bike lane. I ride up to 6th Street and then hang a big right, across the Avenue.
By this time a couple of things had occured to me. One, that I could possibly stop by the 7th Street & Avenue A Sunday farmers market and see what was on offer, and, then it dawned on me that I had recently been wanting to stop by the Walter De Maria house on East 6th Street, between 1st Avenue & Avenue A, which has newly been opened, to see the exhibition on view -- an installation by Dan Colen (the building had been purchased earlier in the year by Peter Brant, following Walter De Maria's death in July 2013). I had contacted the Brant Foundation to find out about visiting -- they gave me a tel # and I called last week. I was told they would be open from 10am to 6pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and that Sunday would be the last day. It was now 4ish.
I rode the bike to the closest station at 7th Street & Avenue A and docked it. I checked out the market, but all I got was 2 apples. Then I walked back to 6th Street and up the block. As I approached the building I saw someone stride up to and swing the door open and walk in. So, I figured I'd do it just the same, just as boldly.
I have been walking, driving, riding, passing by, this building since I moved to New York in early 1981. My first sublet was on East 6th Street between 1st & 2nd Avenues, where all the Indian restaurants are. It was always said, in hushed and reverent tones, that Walter De Maria lived there, had his studio there. And when you went by at night you'd look up to the top of the building and look for a light to be on. Walter was home. And this building didn't look like any normal sort of building, in fact it is an old electrical substation -- very tall. It's facade was always imposing, like a fortress. One always fantasized about what it looked like inside. To actually walk up to that door, boldly, and just open it, like walking up to and into any art gallery, seemed pretty nervy -- practically intrusive!
I stumbled in. To a tiny kind of harshly lit ramshackle foyer, shallow and broad with a high ceiling. The place looked a shambles. A rickety table with a laptop and a blonde curly haired young woman on her phone asking about tea, and quite ignoring one's presence. To the left was an opening leading to some narrow steep ancient metal stairs. On this side of the wall were a couple of beat up looking chairs and a ragged hole in the wall at shin level, like it had been kicked in. When the young woman finally got off the phone I asked how to proceed. She icily pointed at the stairs and said to walk up. And then graciously pointed to a pile of press releases on one of the chairs. OK. I went on the hike up the stairs.
The stairs took several turns before reaching the next floor. The architecture was kind of interesting in that decrepit sophisticated industrial art sort of way -- thinking about DIA, in it's various incarnations, and the Domino Sugar Factory, etc. Even that building in Basel where Liste has it's fair, and I believe you have to hike up steep narrow stairs to get around.
There were a couple of visitors moving swiftly in and out of the spaces and stairs, and a guard on each floor. As employees they were dressed very casually. And it was pretty chilly in there. Not so much for me climbing stairs and not staying very long, but for the folks working it would have been a haul, counting the minutes til 6 o'clock. There were 3 floors of exhibition. I decided to hike to the top and then work my way down -- as I prefer anyway, anywhere I go.
On the top floor was a guard with a wool hat on his head and his nose in his phone, but chatty anyway. Our voices echoed in the space and it was sometimes hard to hear ourselves, as we stood about 15 feet apart. But the chat got philosophical pretty fast, he said he was an ex Navy SEAL. He had a world view, and strong convictions, but didn't seem to know anything about, or be particularly interested in, art. I figured he looked at these empty wine bottles and cigarette butts as some kind of indulgent rich excess and probably part of the reason why the world was on it's way to hell in a hand basket.
It was sort of twilighty out the windows, enough light to still see buildings out there, but the light was fading fast. The stairs going to the next floor up were blocked by a piece of wood (maybe that is where Walter had his bedroom) and I headed down to the next floor. This was the one with the long table covered in empty bottles, that looked like the "last supper", with Dan Colen artworks elegantly hung in niches on the walls. I wondered if there had been an actual party there to create the installation. All the bottles had their labels off. Such deliberation suggests that it might all have been installed by careful elves, despite the casual look of everything.
On the bottom floor, which would have been the 2nd floor, there was a weird and hard to photograph, contraption up near the top of the space -- some kind of very heavy machinery winch thing mounted on something ginormous, that could move back and forth across the space. Very heavy industrial. No idea what that could be. But gave the space a certain ambience. A flavor of history, other times, heavy equipment now defunct, only alive in it's aesthetic energy.
Back downstairs. Now there was a second girl, with brown hair. She actually seemed sort of friendly, made eye contact and smiled. I asked what would be happening in the future and they said no real plans as yet. I asked about a mailing list or so, and they told me to email newyork@gagosian.com. I was a little taken aback by the Gagosian reference, but then it did make sense -- both Dan Colen and Walter De Maria are on Gagosian's artist's list.
I must say, it was an oddly and altogether satisfying art experience. It had the DIA aura about it. The Heiner Friedrich reverence/reference, particularly from the early days when idealism prevailed -- the whole minimalist/conceptualist thing so revered in Germany in the 60's and 70's. I felt the spirit of Walter De Maria -- who I never personally met -- but who's work has been familiar to me since the early 70's and my art school days in Germany -- particularly memorable the "Vertical Kilometer" at the Kassel dokumenta VI in 1977. Before DIA went to 22nd Street in Chelsea it was in Soho, and we would visit the Earth Room and the Broken Kilometer, like pilgrims at a shrine -- I believe the Earth Room is still there (141 Wooster Street), as well as the Broken Kilometer (393 West Broadway) -- both permanent DIA installations -- as well as the Lightning Field out in the southwest. This was back in the days before Soho turned into a shopping mall, and the streets were empty and scary at night, and the only real bar to visit was Fanelli's.
And here was Dan Colen -- not born yet back in the day -- conjuring up these ghosts. Having a dialog with the spirits, hanging his art on the wall. There will always be a new generation coming up ...
I left glad I'd remembered to stop by, and see the show before it closed. And resolving to see more art in the new year -- get out more. But, also glad that this was happening in my neighborhood, where I have lived since 1981. Where all these real estate atrocities have been going on for years now, in the name of gentrification. Seemingly getting worse and worse with each new acquisition. The neighborhood crumbling under the aggressive bullying of greedy landlords. A transient population taking over, young, who don't care and are not invested in the community. Homogenization abounds.
It would be so great if Walter De Maria's house would be something cultural, really truly, in the best possible sense. It would be such a relief.
I walked down the block, to 6th Street & Avenue B. By this time there were quite a few bikes docked there. I unlocked the garden gate and went up the path. I think it looks so trashy in there, garbage everywhere (a lot just flies in), a jumble of discarded furniture all over and around the stage, weird broken things in plots, a mess. But, that's just me. I ignore it now because I'm a "member at large" since the powers that be decided to demote me and yank my plot away under some pretext -- the perk being I don't have to attend any meetings or put in any community hours. Just have access and sit in the sun. But, I did volunteer to feed the cat. Who came running.
The dusk was gathering as I scurried around the corner into my building …
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