Yesterday I was in New York to see “The Flaming Lips”. The concert was amazing (as I had expected a lips show to be) but what made it even better was that they gave every attendee a laser pointer. You can imagine the insanity that ensued. At one point Wayne Coyne held up a mirror and had everyone point to it. That was cool, but not as cool as when he had them turn off all the lights and everyone shined thier lasers (all 2500 of them) onto a huge balloon that was bouncing around in the audience.. It was pretty spectacular. All in all an amazing experience. The Flaming Lips are now (in my book) officially amazing in concert. (here is a link to some videos from the show and here is an example of the laser pointer anarchy)
But that’s not why I’m writing today. As I sit here at work I am having flashbacks to an incredible experience I had earlier in the day yesterday. A friend had taken me to a Moma gallery in Queens called PS1. I’ve been to a number of galleries in my life but nothing compared to this one. First off, it’s an old school building that has been converted into a gallery. The building is beautiful and on it’s upper floors the rooms (classroom sized) are doled out one to an artist so you walk the halls and go into one room and get amazed and then in another room there is something completely different. I’m not doing this concept any justice.. It’s more amazing than it sounds.
The thing that really has my head still spinning was the show that was on the first floor and basement called “Into me/Out of Me” which I believe closes today. I was at first excited when I saw a sign in the hallway warning me about the graphic content I was going to be exposed to since I generally love crazy stuff. I was in some ways surprised and amazingly for me uncomfortable. This stuff was totally hardcore. There was sex, there was blood, there waspregnancy, there was vomit, there was everyhing.. There were video installations, photographs, paintings sculptures.. it’s a rather amazing collection of stuff from the 60’s till today. I saw a ton of famous artist works. As an example, in the basement, way back in a corner of this dark cavelike room that held the boilers for the school was a full sized bronse sculpture of a woman peeing. As you walked in you could hear the trickle.. bizarre, but simply amazing in some strange way. There were Maplethorp photos, videos of strange germans from the 60’s, I can’t even begin to describe it all.
The thing to take from all of this is that PS1 is a bad ass gallery that has some serious clout so there you will most likely see very high quality art but art that you won’t see everywhere.. I don’t know what the next show they have will hold but I do know it will be amazing.
For those of you who keep up, you should already know that I’m fascinated by street art. Not grafitti, though some of it could be cool, but real artistic statements like the original Keith Harings, the chalk drawings I used to find every once and a while in NYC, the sticker art here in Philly, Banksy, etc. My favourite thing that I’ve noticed for a few years now but never took the time to think about and research has been these cool things I’d see in the street from time to time. I know them now to be called “Toynbee Tiles” but I used to think they were simply carved metal plates that got embedded into the street.