When Art Is Eclipsed by Art
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
DUMBO’s 10th annual Art Under the Bridge Festival transformed the Brooklyn neighborhood into a public spectacle of performance, music, and open studios this weekend. Though the neighborhood has evolved from a gritty enclave for artists to a slick pocket of real estate, the festival’s antics ensured that anyone walking by felt the presence of creativity.
As a cellist accompanied tango dancers, five young men in flannel shirts and hard hats wandered by — with their faces and clothing slathered in pie cream. Continuing the confectionary theme, the dotted outline of a human body — made with cupcakes — had been placed a few yards past the dancers.
What about the art? Or, for that matter, the artists — the ones who settled in this neighborhood when it was still an urban frontier? Tours of the artists’ work spaces were somewhat eclipsed by all the installation, interactive art, video, dance, and performance art sprinkled around. Inside the Dumbo Arts Center, guest curator Martina Batan, of the Ronald Feldman Gallery, assembled a group exhibition titled “Ultimate Destination.” It included a wall installation created by Williamsburg’s City Reliquary Museum. Broken “relics” from religious sculpture, a parking ticket, and other incongruous items were mounted and on display. Across the room, David Friedman showed surreal imagery made of ink on Bounty paper towels.
Outdoors, in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Matthew Callinan’s “Tee-Pee,” a triangular structure lit from within by strings of white lights, stood isolated on a grassy mound and glowed against the backdrop of the Manhattan Bridge. The piece, reminiscent of a Noguchi floor lamp, served as an elegant reminder of the earliest inhabitants of DUMBO, present long before the manufacturers or painters.
Still, foot traffic was brisk inside 68 Jay St., a still-gritty building that houses the largest number of studio artists. Viewers waited patiently for the one creaky elevator in order to wander the warren of hallways leading to studios filled with paintings and sculpture.
Andrea Sanders, a photographer, displayed her impressive series of travel images, many of them aerial views shot from the window seat of a commercial airliner. Digitally printed and enlarged — and somewhat blurred due to the filter of the window glass — the pictures simply, but effectively capture both the geometric appeal of aerial topographic imagery and the eerie sense of hovering over vast distances.
A few blocks over, at 55 Washington St., the artists’ digs, fewer in number, were considerably more upscale and the hallways were quieter. Studios shared floors with the offices of lawyers and developers. Many of the artists had been evicted from studios now converted into condos, but were the recipients of reduced rents offered by the building management to maintain a creative presence in the neighborhood. In Ellen Sayers’s studio, an impressive mound of grey-brown garden dirt filled the corner of the room, dotted with large spirals of plastic neon pink flowers. Down two floors, in Shawn Dulaney’s studio, a sense of struggle was noticeably absent. Ms. Dulaney’s rectangular linen canvases are beautifully layered with broad horizontal strokes of translucent acrylic paint.The studio itself was relatively spare, lacking the clutter of objects seen in other artists’ spaces. Instead, large photographs, shots of the Grand Canyon, the country-side in Ireland, and other locales that inspire Ms. Dulaney’s coloring were neatly pinned to one wall, along with the wings of a red wing blackbird, poetic excerpts, and a postcard detail from Titian’s Renaissance masterpiece, “Bacchus and Ariadne.” In her artistic statement, Ms. Dulaney calls her paintings “windows into the physical and emotional landscapes of memory.”
The mood here contrasted sharply from the open houses sponsored last month by the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. In warehouses located at the farthest end of Van Brunt Street, visitors were greeted by one of the neighborhood’s most popular residents, karaoke DJ, Kay Sera, a transvestite who bears a striking resemblance to a kindly middle-aged secretary. The crowd happily gobbled the hummus, baklava, cheeses, and wine offered, and art works were offered for as low as $50. Many images were drawn from the surrounding environs: the crumbling industrial sites and meticulously restored historical homes. The vibe was homegrown and decidedly local.
If Red Hook, a neighborhood teetering on the brink of gentrification, feels little a bit like country life in the city, DUMBO, with its luxurious lofts and high rises, now feels like a slice of Manhattan transplanted in Brooklyn.