Light-Years Away on Lunch Break
By Shaila K. Dewan
The New York Times, August 27, 2001
Compared with Emmylou Harris concerts and movie stars doing Chekhov in the park, the prospect of summer gallerygoing might seem a mite tame. But on a quiet stretch of Hudson Street in SoHo, a steady stream of people are discovering a free thrill that stands out even in New York City's seemingly inexhaustible supply of gratis entertainment, and not just because it is indoors and there is no line to get in.
It does not take much to determine that "NGC6093," as the show at
the Ace Gallery is titled, is not your ordinary art experience.
Merely observe the visitors as they exit: their knees are weak,
their jaws below sea level, and requests to describe what they have
just seen are often met with a stammer.
On a recent Saturday it took Frank Simone, 46, a writer and
painter who lives in Sugar Hill in Harlem, a few minutes to work up
to this description: "It's like being right under the best
fireworks display you've ever seen, but it's not the Fourth of
July, it's Christmas, and you're running through the city looking
at all the lights at top speed."
Anne Marie Carnese, 26, an installation artist from Jersey City,
said: "I felt like I was frozen in a way — but in a good way.
I felt like a molecle in the air, moving around, but not
inanimate."
Courtenay Sturchio, 22, a recently graduated psychology major from
Colts Neck, N.J., offered simply, "It's the weirdest place I've
ever been."
Entering the gallery is like stepping into a video game inside a
disco. Walls, floors and ceilings are covered in shiny holographic
panels, and in some rooms colored lights, strobes and lasers play
across a dizzying field of suspended mirrored cubes, cycling from
rosy brightness to near-pitch darkness. Created by a Los Angeles
artist, Hiro Yamagata, the show, which was originally set to close
in July but proved so popular it was extended through Oct. 21, runs
on three generators and uses equipment provided by NASA.
Despite the sensory onslaught, people called "NGC6093" (after a
globular cluster in the constellation Scorpius) a place they did
not want to leave. One man, wearing a white hat and a shirt
embroidered with dragons, compared it to a Japanese garden.
"This is going to be tough," one man said to his companion as they
prepared to step out of the visual melee into the lobby.
"This is going to be heartbreaking," she replied.
The nvironment is so otherworldly that the first thing people do when
they enter the gallery is stop in their tracks. Unless, of course,
they are repeat visitors, like Mr. Simone and Moira T. Smith, 44,
who had dragged along a friend, John Proctor, 27, and put on
earphones connected to compact disc players. She listened to Moby,
he to "The Best of Santana."
"It almost seems to go along with whatever you bring," Ms. Smith said.
Many of the visitors were artists, like Ms. Smith, and a sizable
share looked as if they had just been shopping for torn T-shirts
and gaudy belts in Williamsburg thrift stores. But others were less
likely to fit the typical gallery-rat profile. "This is the first
show we've ever done where all the businessmen in the area come in
on their lunch breaks," said Frederick Coldwell, the gallery's
director of operations.
Three waiters wearing crisp white shirts came in and wandered
around for a bit before hurrying back to work at a restaurant on
nearby Dominick Street. Like many who find their way to the
gallery, they came on the strength of a recommendation that was
urgent, if lacking in concrete detail. Something along the lines
of, "Look, you just got to see it."
They were not disappointed. "It was the most exciting break I've
ever taken," said Elizabeth Topp, 25, before disappearing into the
restaurant.
People offered theories about art and science, about bending light
and space, about an environment so three-dimensional that it seemed
flat.
Some visitors lay on the floor. Some wore 3-D glasses, taken from
a box on the wall. Some appeared to be under the influence of
illegal substances. But more seemed to think that the exhibition
was transportive enough on its own, a high-tech primal scream of
sorts, a sheer something different in the midst of the mundane.
"This was probably one of the better things we did this summer,
and we saw every summer film," said Eustace Pilgrim, the man in the
dragon shirt, who was with his wife, Leanyse.
"What I like is that it's such a departure from this space here,"
he said, indicating the hot, and temporarily traffic-barren, summer
street, "to that space there," he said, pointing to the double
doors. "It's almost like a portal to another dimension."
Copyright © 2001 The New York Times Company.
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