Lisa Kirk, "Whitney Cake," 2004

The Whitney Museum generously stayed open for three days in a row last week, though only at the expense of trimming down Michael Asher’s plan to keep it open for a week.  Understandably, the Museum didn’t have the resources to support such a marathon, though it did announce last week its imminent, multimillion-dollar migration.  Curiously, that spotlight-swiping announcement surfaced just two days after MoMA PS1 opened Greater New York 2010.

Sharing Asher’s ambition to use the entire Museum is Zefrey Throwell, a NYC-based artist “investigating honest communication, in all its varied plumage.”  And though curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari didn’t invite Zefrey for this Biennial, someone “higher up” at the Museum did.  The Whitney insider from on high “thought I should be in the Biennial,” says Zefrey.

Performer with Pae White's "Smoke Knows," 2009 (image: Zefrey Throwell)

And so he was, at least for five minutes.  Zefrey summoned, then directed, 75 friends and fellows through a multi-tiered blitzkrieg of 25 simultaneous actions scattered throughout the entire Museum premises.  The super-scene was called Entropy Symphony.  No bystander saw it coming, but nearly all got a piece of it.

Band of Outsiders, 1964

The scene downstairs: Several party poopers, no pun intended, reported to guards that the men’s bathroom in the basement was a rockin’ with a heterosexual couple having noisy sex in a stall – within earshot of the Museum Shop and Sandwiched, the temporary cafe.

If this stall's a' rockin.... (IMAGE: Zefrey Throwell)

Meanwhile, the elevator belched malodorous fumes, which began to smell sulfurous, resulting in a very temporary bomb scare, quickly downgraded to “stink bomb” status.

In the stairwell – the only alternative to the elevator – a nude woman sauntered down, a live-action Duchamp; and a nude man strolled through the galleries accompanied by a fully-clothed friend.

Duchamp (l), Mel Ramos (r)

Spooners and Nude at Mike Kelley (image: Zefrey Throwell)

On the third floor, just outside the Kate Gilmore struggle, a young woman on crutches tripped and fell over her friend’s foot.  ”You did it on purpose,” she shrieked!  Mutual blame escalated to shouting, shoving, wrestling, and then valorous guards: “Break it up, ladies!”

image: Zefrey Throwell

Meanwhile, an earnest lovers’ quarrel around the corner hit its zenith when the girl began chasing the boy past the Pae White tapestry and around Thomas Houseago’s colossal Baby. And downstairs, a gang fought over a frozen chicken found on the floor near the Robert Grosvenor sculpture.

"Fowl Play" (image: Zefrey Throwell)

Outside, a giant paper airplane battle sent folded Fighting Falcons into the sculpture garden.  And on the fifth floor, two sweethearts (a recent Columbia MFA and his girl) spooned on the floor, admiring Mike Kelley’s More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin.

In the most confrontational performance, a clumsy visitor spilled his hot coffee on a woman clutching a newborn baby in her arms.  The woman wailed that her baby was burned and permanently disfigured.  Catastrophe! The man panicked and dumped the rest of the cup down his white shirt and khakis pants.  Guards swarmed, crying, “What are you doing, bringing coffee into the museum?”

The man pleaded, “What is she doing, bringing a baby into the museum?”

Thomas Houseago, "Baby," 2009-10

And in the most athletic performance, Zefrey himself snuck in a counterfeit Charles Ray painting – a “floppy flower,” as he calls it – and stuck it to the wall.  Then he yanked it down and bolted.

Run LOL Run! (image: Zefrey Throwell)

-A woman alerted the guards: “He’s stealing the artwork!”  They chased, but at their slow pace, Zefrey easily escaped downstairs – until the commotion caught the attention of a vigilant witness, who sprang into action and tackled Zefrey.  The guards pounced after that – and ripped up the artwork, pistil from stamen.

image: Zefrey Throwell

Gary Carrion-Murayari was in the third-floor galleries giving an intimate Curator’s Tour to a wealthy couple when the quarreling lovers raced by.  Spotting him, and not yet in the know, I asked him if this was a performance.  ”Not one that’s authorized,” he mumbled.

And after five minutes, it was over.

BUSTED! Zefrey Throwell, red-handed (image: the Artist)

The burned baby was really a doll.  The sulfurous smell? Just fart spray.  The Stop-Thief woman: Zefrey’s mother, visiting for the weekend.  All just props and actors.  -But the nudity was real, as was the bathroom sex: those f*ckers were forcibly ejected (and photographed).

Epilogue: Afterward, the performers met at Central Park and “had some beers.”  Zefrey got his hair and beard cut, and then returned to the Museum, undetected, and struck up conversation with a guard who, an hour earlier, had pinned Zefrey to the floor.  ”It’s been a hell of a day,” the guard sighed.

"Don't You Recognize Me?" (image: the artist)

Venus Williams at the French Open vs. Guercino’s Samson [detail from his Samson Captured by the Philistines (1619)]

AP Photo on Left, Guercino on Right

I forgot to point out this magic moment in curatoria, which we now admit to our canon as an addendum to our Lipstick and a Pig (May 11, 2010):

Nate Lowman, "For J.J."

At Andrea Rosen Gallery, this Nate Lowman assemblage, For J.J.:

Turd Pretzel

beams its centralized turd pretzel into the adjoining gallery:

Fellow Turdzel

where it faces an uncannily similar counterpart appended to a sculpture by Neil Hedger:

Right there

Genius!  The Hedger sculpture is part of She Awoke with a Jerk, curated by Nigel Cooke.  The “fraturdnal” twinship reminds me of this passage from Tom Sawyer (perfectly timed for the 150th Anniversary of Mark Twain’s death):

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom’s astonishment was boundless ! He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

“Well, that beats anything!”

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. Tom’s whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called –

“Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!”

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright.

“He dasn’t tell! So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it.”

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:

“Brother, go find your brother!”

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other.

Genius!

IMAGES: Michael Bilsborough

Photos by chromogenius David Benjamin Sherry are the highlight of Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1.

How great to see someone leaping into hallucinogenic sensuality and adult (perv?) humor, without abandoning the optimistic playfulness that keeps one fresh.  Exploration seems to be the key here, as opposed to mere “travel.”

The Amy Yao portals are terrific in the company of her stick signifiers, though I wish they didn’t block the sight lines of David’s room.  With the space we’d gain, you could really just bask in the room for hours, soaking in the lush washes of chromatic bliss, like laying in a pool filled with Skittles.  It’s as sexy and trippy as Pipilotti Rist’s Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), which Klaus Biesenbach brought to MoMA last year, except domestic in size and production.

I would have moved them into the next room, where the aforementioned sticks are mercilessly stuck (“stuck” as in “Looks like we’re stuck here,” like Donner-Party “stuck;” not just as in “put” or “placed.”)