THE BEST PIECE OF ART IN NEW YORK/THE WORLD/THE DECADE

All three versions of the installation are based around a meth lab gone wrong and its burnt-up surroundings—not to give away the secret if the previous titles or the GIANT METH LAB inside don’t give it away for me. The biggest difference between “Hello Meth Lab With a View” and “Black Acid Co-op”, is that the former was built inside of a two-story apartment in a high-rise condo while the latter is its own space, built out by the creators and featuring many, many more rooms and spaces than the previous ones. The central scene is a 70’s/80’s mobile home which houses a meth lab in its kitchen and has evidently gone up in flames, creating new blown out paths into surrounding rooms. Spaces are connected by stairs, ramps, exploded holes in walls, unhinged doorways, and one room actually connects to the next through the back of a refrigerator. There’s a large wide open space with blue painted walls which are peeling away; a pristine, red-carpeted gallery space with fragments of the burnt-down mobile home on display under glass and large collages and photographs on the walls; a library of books with all the covers torn off and fake names written on their spines; an underground Chinatown convenience store selling herbal medicines, sudafed, and pornographic shirts; and an attic space with a multicolored roof stocked with jars and vitrines containing small keepsakes while small shrines, ephemera, and two stuffed dogs flank the sides. Throughout the entire installation are terrariums housing either plants or white plastic shapes, cryptic references to astrology, and, in a few spaces, photographs of people pinned to zodiac charts.

Contemporary conceptual art often comes across as a puzzle for a specifically educated set. When you’re in on the codes and symbols and you understand what you think the artist intends for you to understand there’s a sly moment where you can almost see a sculpture wink at you like “There you go… you get me… you get what I’m sayin’.” If you’re not privy to that language then there’s usually a lot of “This is bullshit” and “I could make this,” etc. I usually float between the two, sometimes in on the joke and sometimes left scratching my head thinking “Why oh why did I pay so much money for such a worthless degree.” On certain rare, very fortunate occasions, none of it matters in the least—the work is just “good.” There’s no question that what you’re looking at is art, very impressive art, and even though I may still not get the exact intention, it doesn’t really matter. There’s still a lot of credit to be given to works that are simply cool. Though I still try to find the meaning in their METHod (hiyo!).

I’ve visited Black Acid Co-op four times now, each run trying to dig a little deeper and spend more time dissecting all the installation’s little clues and deconstructing their meaning. There’s so much going on and the whole space is so saturated and over-stimulating that it’s easy to miss most of the very visible details and VERY easy to forget the small hidden treasures scattered throughout.  Next to the meth lab are wanted signs for arson. The flyer on the wall near the Chinese bodega that says “A $eason in Hell.” The Terminator poster that has a photo of a girl in a bikini behind the Governator’s eye. The row of book titles that may possibly explain the whole installation but just don’t contain quite enough clues.

What really interests me is that while “Hello Meth Lab” represented the possibility of a meth lab existing within an unfinished high-rise condo, “Black Acid” seems more invested in the community surrounding the exploded meth lab than the lab itself. As the press release states, “Despite the strong contrast of scenes, the entire installation will feel as if it is a unified system of spaces, interconnected and functioning together. Ducts, wires and tubes traverse rooms creating a semblance of an organism: architecture as body, electricity as capillaries, and volumes as organs.” The idea of the spaces acting together anatomically, I’m told, is part of the explanation of the astrological signs posted throughout. The interconnectivity of the spaces representing spiritual or cosmic connections or some such. I don’t quite buy that, but as said, I don’t really care. I don’t understand astrology or alchemy, nor have I ever owned or operated a meth lab, but in this case I’ll take their word for it.

Having been to “Black Acid” a few times over the past few weeks it’s also been great to see the effects of time and other visitors on the installation. The plants behind the glass in the Chinatown shop are wilting, a few things here and there have moved or been changed, the crumpled newspapers on the floor are more scattered, and some of the flyers on the wall leading to the basement have been removed. There’s something so familiar and MESSY, about the whole scene that makes visitors feel comfortable enough to touch and remove objects as they please. "Hello Meth Lab With a View" had a balcony off one of the rooms that many people just hung out on and smoked cigarettes. It’s not often that a work of art is inviting enough for people to chill at and smoke in. A friend of mine took a tape player off the wall and threw it at another friend, but the other friend didn’t catch it and it fell off the balcony and crashed on the street (sorry dudes, I had no involvement). Still, I can’t help but imagine that Lowe and Freeman wouldn’t mind the fact that that happened. If I’m wrong then maybe I really don’t know shit about what they’re doing.

Not all installations work like this, but these two have a way of making work inviting enough that the viewer feels encouraged to participate, whether or not they’re supposed to. At PS1’s Greater New York 2005 show, I walked on to the sandy shore of Lowe’s piece “On the Beach” and looked around inside the teepee. I was nearly thrown out for it but I had no clue I WASN’T supposed to do that. For me that’s the beauty of art.  I want to touch and feel art and I enjoy feeling as though the work is living and breathing and is affected by my presence.

Black Acid Co-op is open to the public until August 15 and if you don’t go to it I will kill you.