Sunday, March 22, 2009

We All Scream.

So, I thought my last post on the Free Store would be the last thing I had to say about the project. Wrong! I went to the closing party on Friday (Still open today, Sunday, though!), and was pleasantly knocked out by performances by Min Oh and Miwa Koizumi, expertly curated by Felicity Hogan.


Miwa Koizumi

Miwa Koizumi gave me ice cream. The flavor? Wall Street. This was some kind of genius, let me tell ya. The taste was vaguely familiar and sweet, but with a subtle leaning towards the toxic. Yum. Ugh. Then it hit me. It tastes like a filthy Guinness. It spoke to a present-day reality familiar to anybody who works down there: No, not the toxic assets. I'm talking about the bars. When I go out with my work friends for drinks, the conversation is pretty simple: Should we go to this shitty fake Irish bar or that shitty fake Irish bar? Or no, wait. Let's go to the OTHER shitty fake Irish bar. They have good nachos, and they don't clean their taps enough. Awesome!


Min Oh

Min Oh's charming and hilarious performance echoed the participatory nature of the Free Store. You choose what happens within the framework established by the artist. I haven't laughed this hard--and I haven't seen a crowd laugh this hard--for art since Candice Breitz's show at Sonnabend in 2005. Here, the audience chose the narrative direction for Oh's "play" in which she played with and battled, um . . . herself. Actually, there was one choice that she took away from us, and it was worth it for the comedic value. Too much fun.

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