We Went to the Drake-Curated Sotheby’s Exhibition

Fine art masterpieces combined with professionally-vetted beats have generated quite the buzz inside Sotheby's S|2 gallery space for I Like It Like This, an ongoing showcase of Contemporary black American artists with musical pairings curated by none other than Drake. The result is like a labyrinth of infectious songs and stunning sculptures and paintings, the ultimate experience for the art lover and audiophile.

For the show's opening, The Creators Project trekked up to the Upper East Side to infiltrate the exhibition and bask in the star-studded, multimedia mash-up. After stepping off of York Ave, we were greeted with the show’s gold-embossed sign, its flashy simplicity reflecting both the contemporary elegance and extravagance of the show. Once inside, we immediately gravitated immediately towards Untitled (Devil’s Head), where a set of Beats headphones were plugged into an iPad which, at the time (Sotheby's has since announced that some of the paintings and songs were mis-matched) blasting Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money.” When I was eventually able to pull my eyes—and ears—away from the station, I realized I had been deeply entranced enough to miss a cue—the crowd was milling about the curators.

Although the music/art pairings were odd at times, @champagnepapi and @sothebys exhibition presented a diverse and impressive assemblage of work from a cross-section of contemporary black American artists.

A photo posted by Creators Project (@creators_project) on Apr 28, 2015 at 4:31pm PDT

The representatives from Sotheby's described for us the evolution of the show, focusing on both the art curation by Sotheby’s Contemporary Department of 56 artworks from the artists and Drake’s curation of musical accompaniments to 20 of these works, selected, it seems, entirely based on his “feeling” from each piece. They explained that these selections aim to prompt a dialogue between these reciprocal fields of fine arts and music, which have come to express the black American experience. Sprinkled throughout the gallery, the sound stations stage this dialogue, streaming Drake’s impressionistic playlists into viewers eardrums.

As one of the female curators carefully explained, however, “This is his interpretation of these pieces. He has been very adamant that this is soley how he sees [these works] and he wants everyone to participate.” At each station, she added, “We have Drake's picks but we’re encouraging viewers to Instagram or Tweet their favorite work with a song, any song in the world, that you feel relates to the piece, and soon, this will generate on Beats Music,” resulting in a crowdsourced playlist for each artwork.

With this pretext in mind, I spent the next hour listening and looking my way through exhibit, attempting to retrace Drake’s process for each pairing and drawing my own correlations—a step the show fosters through the opportunity to choose your own pictorial playlist, and Tweet or Instagram the new pairing to @Sothebys with the hashtag #S2xDrake. After tuning into Kehinde Wiley's Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Henri, Duc D'Orléans paired with Jay-Z and Kanye West's "The Joy,” humming along to Wangechi Mutu’s Untitled (Female in Fishnet) paired with Drake’s own “Wu Tang Forever,” and swaying uncontrollably to Terry Adkin’s Norfolk paired with Shuggie Otis “Aht Uh Mi Hed,” [Editor's note: Click here to check out the updated sound + art pairings] I put a few of my thoughts and queries to the curators.

While the wide range of Contemporary black American fine art and Drake selections imbue this experience with a tone both intriguing and fresh, the access granted to viewers is what makes this show truly universal, provactive and, at times, a downright, fine art dance party.

Two more pieces from Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Black" and "Jazz" are interestingly paired with Chief Keef's "Faneto". #S2xDrake

A photo posted by Creators Project (@creators_project) on Apr 28, 2015 at 4:28pm PDT

Go forth, vibe out, and view I Like It Like This for yourself at Sotheby's, on display until June 12, 2015.

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