Gelitin- The Art of Performance Art

I've never been fully into performance art. To me, its like a drag queen- when it is good its VERY good, but when its bad, an utter tragedy. I am not dissing the genre as a whole, but being an art form that requires ample amounts of people's time to experience it, there is more of a chance for something to go terribly wrong- or worse, have someone lose interest.

Looking back over the performances I've experienced over the last few years, I can't help but think of Gelitin at Greene Naftali about two years ago. (a smile has already come across by face as I write this and revisit the memory).

I think I was going through a phase of freelancer's drought, and luckily had oodles of time to spend sitting on the wooden bleachers that were built around the gallery to observe the collective's progress on their "blind sculpture."

For days I watched the G-stringed artists saw wood, mache paper, fasten fasteners, paint surfaces, and tape together giant sculptures, all while blind folded, submitting all of their trust in their "Art guides"- Andrew WK, Urs Fischer, Agathe Snow, David LaChappelle, Tom Sachs and other "art stars" or whatever you want to call them.

The whole performance/installation (which I wrote about at length here for No New Enemies and MODART) just made me feel so alive, so happy to be in New York, and so introspective about the buzzing den of creativity this city is. I remember leaving each night with a smile on my face (much like I have now), feeling the electricity of non-sensical art making that I'd watched for hours before, and feeling like a real New Yorker.