For the past two days I’ve been buried in a corner of the largest warehouse I’ve ever seen, organizing the Stephen Sprouse archives for the umpteenth time.
It’s big news in the art world, but in case you haven’t heard, Jeffery Deitch, (owner of Deitch Projects where the Stephen Sprouse retrospective exhibit was held in January of last year) has been named director of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. On condition of this new job, he must cease all commercial operations by June 1st of this year (see this article in The Los Angeles Times ) which means that the Sprouse archives — under the custodianship of Deitch Projects since before the exhibition — must now, like all the other art flying under the Deitch umbrella, find a new home. Without going into the details, it means that I’m once again diving neck-deep into decades worth of paintings, sketches, clothing, accessories, photographs, press clippings, assorted ephemera and, above all, memories.
Stephen’s pile of things is a lot of stuff to go through, and I always feel a little overwhelmed whenever I do, but at least it’s interesting stuff. Unlike the colossal towers of paper that surround it — various documents put into storage by the Great State of New Jersey. At least I’m not being asked to deal with any of this:
Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the support during the good times and the bad. (This year had a lot of both.) Raymi often suggests I do a “best of” post, but don’t be confused, that’s not what this is.
January
The Stephen Sprouse retrospective “Rock on Mars” at Deitch Projects opens the year with a bang.
February
I kept telling Deborah I was too busy to even think about moving, but with the design and installation of the Sprouse show finally over, I’m out of excuses: Apartment hunting begins.
March
After the Sprouse Show comes down I get to visit Traffic Court
April
More apartment hunting before we finally sign a lease and then pack up and go.
May
Briefly settling in to our new apartment before leaving for Hong Kong to oversee the installation of another Sprouse show, celebrating our one year anniversary along the way.
June
The summer motorcycle accident and the surgery that followed.
July
July was slow, though I did manage to get out of the house.
August
My friend Brian comes and goes. August was for leaving.
September
With my foot on the mend, we skip town on a road trip to Michigan where Deborah falls in love with alpacas and I get back in the saddle.
October
Deborah’s parent’s find out about her “Secret Life”.
November
Time to break another bone. I’m not sure what was worse, the actual accident or the neurologist appointment that followed.
December
No much happening in December with a broken arm other than getting flashed on the subway.
And that’s that. Tonight is going to be low-key. The plan is to stay home, drink champagne, and watch the entire Season 2 of Californication. Hope you all have a great holiday. See you next year.
I finally have an afternoon off, and plan to do a little sightseeing, but the hotel is so nice it’s hard to leave. Either way we’re waiting for our dim sum breakfast to be delivered so we’ll be kicking back in the hotel for a little longer, anyway.
Deborah has been alone for most of the trip, be-bopping across the city via subways, taxis and ferries, to various markets and neighborhoods, generally exhausting herself, and so once we checked into the hotel yesterday, after we’d finished our welcome tea of course, she collapsed on the bed and took a nap. Jeffery Deitch and Paige Powell, both arrived in Hong Kong the previous day, and I met them in the lobby and escorted them across the street to the museum for a preview of the exhibit.
Escorting them across the street sounds like a quick and easy jaunt, but to get from one side of Salisbury Road to the other, you have to go down into what must be the largest network of underground shopping malls anywhere in the world. Every subway stop seems to have several entrances blocks away from each other and riding the escalator down into any one of them is entering into a climate controlled twisting maze of high end shops selling high end fashions.
After our museum visit, Jeffery and Paige decided to head to Macau. It’s something Deborah and I had planned to do together, so I headed back to the hotel to see if Deborah was up for going, or at least to make sure she didn’t sleep the whole afternoon away. When I got off the elevator it felt like The Shining — hallways, stretching to infinity, lined with identical doors. Even with small wall plaques pointing the way, I still had trouble finding the room.
Deborah was awake, but with a slight headache and not up for rushing out for a wild night in Macau. Instead, we simply took a short elevator ride to the second floor for some Peking Duck at one of several hotel restaurants. Like I said, the hotel is hard to leave.
Gwielo — Cantonese for “ghost person” or “foreign devil” — is apparently what westerners are called, and walking around the streets of Hong Kong it’s exactly what I feel like — a ghost. Locals walk into me or cross in front of me as if I’m not even there. On the other hand, the Indian and Middle-Eastern and hawkers on the street see me from a mile away. Custom suits, massages, and “Rolex” watches are their primary trades, though I imagine if I was interested they’d have all sorts of other possibilities to offer. They are tactless and accost me with aggressive regularity. If I happen to pass by the same guy more than once — on my way back from one place to another — it’s taken as interest. “No. No. NO!”
The only solution is to treat them as gwielo’s, too — to ignore them, as if it’s possible.
Deborah did want to get a cusotm dress, however, and she walked into one of the many street stalls that are no bigger than a closet, and spoke to four Bangladeshi tailors that were crammed inside to inquire about having one made. She was quoted a price equivalent of about $200 US dollars and even though she’d seen better prices elsewhere on Nathan Road, Nathan Road is so annoying to walk down, she decided the place she was in was as good a place as any. She chose some black silk fabric with embroidered red roses and then made an appointment to be fitted the following day.
The next day she arrived on time but her particular tailor wasn’t there. The others working there told her, “Five minutes, five minutes” and offered her a Coke while trying to sell her on more things. “Whouldn’t you like a suit as well?”
“I don’t wear suits.”
“Like this?”
“I don’t wear suits.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a nice suit? We make you a nice suit.” They pulled down several bolts of fabric for her to choose from.
“I don’t wear suits.”
And so on.
It soon became clear the tailor wasn’t going to show up and Deborah decided to call the whole thing off.
“Please, please, just five minutes.”
“You’ve been saying that for a half hour already.”
“Where are you staying, we can come to your hotel.”
“No. I’m only in Hong Kong for a few more days. I don’t have time for this.”
“Please, we can make an appointment for you.”
“This is my appointment,” she said.
“Please, come back tomorrow.”
“I’d like my money back, please.”
The situation was tense, but one guy was doing his best to keep things from escalating, but the stand off went on for far too long and Deborah couldn’t help but let the word, “Fucking” leave her lips. Once it did, the peacemaker was powerless. The scene exploded.
“You come in here and think you can buy the shop? You think we need your 200 dollars? You think you can order us around with your 200 dollars? You want to buy the shop?”
“Buy the shop? What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t want to buy anything. I want my money back.”
“We don’t need your money.”
“Then why am I still standing here? Where is it?”
They swore at each other for ten more minutes before Deborah left with her money.
“That sucks,” I said. “But you can find another place. They’re everywhere.”
“I don’t even want a fucking dress anymore.”
If all goes according to plan, the next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Hong Kong — assuming I have time to write while I’m there, that is. I’ll be busy working, overseeing the installation of a Stephen Sprouse exhibit at the Hong Kong Museum of Art — part of a larger exhibit called Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation.
I’ve been so focused on the design and details of the Stephen Sprouse aspect of the exhibition (not to mention my other job and our recent move) that it wasn’t until this morning that I looked at the museum’s website to get a handle on the rest of the show. It’s hard not to feel a little intimidated by the roster of world-class artists that are listed and I almost wish I hadn’t looked, but the Sprouse part is essentially an adaptation of the design I did for the Stephen Sprouse retrospective at Deitch Projects in New York so, hopefully, there won’t be too many surprises. I know better than to expect no surprises — in fact there have already been a few — but at the moment I’m more stressed out about traveling than anything else. I hate flying to begin with and a fifteen hour flight is a long haul. Not to mention it involves a trip through some sort of time tunnel which lands me one day into the future.
Deborah plans to travel to the future, too, later in the week. I’ll be busy, but hopefully I can carve out a little time for us to spend together to see the sights of Hong Kong — not to mention celebrate our one year anniversary. If not, she has a surprisingly long list of friends of friends for her to look up once she gets there.
Okay, off to run last minute errands.
Catch you on the flip side.
Last chance to see the Stephen Sprouse show, Rock on Mars, at Deitch Projects. (18 Wooster Street) The show starts coming down tomorrow night.
I was hoping I might be able to avoid going to the gallery this weekend — that I wouldn’t need to be there to help with the de-installation — but my sense of responsibility makes it unavoidable.
It’s going to be depressing.
In the meantime you still have today and tomorrow to check it out.
Regardless of the poor job I did promoting the show, a lot of my friends made the effort to check it out. I think it’s safe to say that winner of the “furthest distance traveled” award goes to Crys and Travis who flew in from Winnipeg for the opening. Unfortunately, I was so busy I hardly got to say two words to them during their stay.
Runner up is probably my old college pal Robie, who flew up from South Carolina.
“What are you in town for?” I asked hiim when we met at the gallery. I assumed he was in New York on business and was simply checking out the show while he was here.
“No, I came to see the show,” he said.
Robie knew Stephen and he helped me out on a number of Sprouse-related projects over the years. More often than not they involved toxic paint fumes in tight spaces — painting Stephen’s apartment with a silver paint that has since become illegal to use indoors. As we walked through the gallery, we reminisced about lost brain cells and nerve damage, and got nearly as loopy talking about it as we did when we were up on a ladder, painting Stephen’s ceiling, tasting the fumes.
A friend of Robie’s from California was also in New York and they were sharing a room at a Midtown hotel. Robie’s friend was here to visit a Tibetian healer for treatment of chronic stomach distress.
“He came from California for that?” I said. “You’d think California would be crawling with alternative healers of every shape and size. Why’d he have to fly to New York?”
Apparently the healer is famous in certain circles and he was highly recommended.
The healer gave Robie’s friend a handful of herbs, balled up into daily doses, and explained an intricate ritual for preparing them. “By the light of the full moon” kind of thing.
“Whatever he gave him,” said Robie, “it smells awful.”
“Where is your friend now?” I said. “You should’ve invited him to the gallery with us.”
“I did. But he got impatient waiting for the herbs to kick in and took Ex-Lax this morning. He got impatient waiting for the Ex-Lax to work, too, and took a bunch more. Now he can’t leave the hotel room.”
Deborah and I arranged to meet my parents at the gallery over the weekend to show them the Sprouse exhibit. Deborah and I were early so we got a couple coffees and sat on the steps of a nearby building to wait. There was an open parking spot directly in front of the gallery and I encouraged Deborah to combine her powers of visualization with my own to keep it free. My mother suffers from a rare joint/muscle disease which makes it hard for her to get around. She does pretty well, considering, but the less walking around she did on the street, the more strength she’d have to tackle the gallery stairs.
When they arrived, I directed my father to pull into the spot. It was near a fire hydrant, though, so before saying hello and shaking hands, we spent a few moments debating whether there was enough space to avoid a ticket. I felt certain there was, but since I still have a major speeding ticket hanging over my head, my credibility was weak. “You’re no closer to the hydrant than the guy behind you is,” I said.
“So we’ll both get tickets,” said my father.
I finally convinced him it would be okay and he parked the car.
We all said hello, shook hands, hugged, kissed an so on.
“The gallery isn’t open yet,” I said.
The gallery usually opens at noon and I figured whoever was working that day was running a little late, but I was wrong. It was Sunday and the gallery isn’t open on Sundays. You’d think I’d know the schedule by now.
At that point, though, we still assumed it was, and that someone would be along to open up any minute. “Why don’t we get some brunch first?” Deborah suggested.
We all agreed and walked around the corner to a noisy french bistro. My parents asked me a lot of questions about the show, but I had trouble hearing them and they had trouble hearing my replies, so we switched the subject and asked each other questions with simpler replies. “The food is good, isn’t it?” “Yup.”
We finished brunch and headed back to the gallery, which still wasn’t open of course.
“I’ll walk to the other gallery and see if anyone is there — find out what’s up.”
Deitch has two gallery spaces in SoHo that are right around the corner from each other. I ran to the other gallery, which was also closed, but I saw a couple of guys I knew through the window and I tapped on the glass.
“What’s the deal?” I said. “Why is the gallery closed?”
“Sunday.”
“You guys aren’t open on Sundays?”
“Nope.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”
“Shit. My parent’s came in from out of town to see the show.”
“Here’s the key,” said Paul, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a jangled jumble of keys on a ring. He sifted for the one I needed and handed it to me. “You know where the lights are, right? Just lock it up and bring me back the key when you’re finished.”
I ran back to where Deborah and my parents were waiting.
“The gallery is closed on Sundays,” I said, waiting to read the looks of disappointment for a beat before pulling the key out of my pocket. “But I’ve got a key.”
We walked in, flipped on the lights, took a minute to figure out how to turn on the DVD players, and then walked around the cavernous space. There were a few concessions that had to be made when designing the show. We knew the opening was going to be packed, and I rearrange the original plans a bit to accommodate the crowd. As a result, when there’s no one there, the show feels a little sparse. Cavernous. But being alone in a cavernous space in the middle of New York City is a rare treat in itself.
We walked around, my father took pictures, my mother tackled the stairs. I told some stories and explained what was what. A few people loitered outside, peeking in, knocked on the door, thinking, like I did, that the gallery was open on Sundays.
When we were finished, I turned out the lights and locked the door after us. “I’m going to run up the street and return the key. I’ll be right back.” As impressed as my parent’s were with the show, they were more impressed that I had a key.
I handed the key back to Paul and we talked for a couple of minutes. “What have you been up to? He asked. Have you been getting interviewed all month?”
“Ha, yeah. Right.”
He asked if I was going to be around to help with the de-installation of the Sprouse show. I’d already been getting emails regarding it.
“It’s going to be a tight schedule,” he said.
“I know.”
A tight schedule without the adrenaline factor to propel things along.
And speaking of propelling things along. I have to run out the door. How the hell I used to post eight times a week, I’ll never know.
