Giant dice flopped through the air last night at Postmasters Gallery, tumbling over a room-sized “Monopolart” game-board. Players moved their paper-mached photo-collaged sculptures of Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner and the blue-chip-like, landing on various famous artists, deciding whether they should buy them or with their giant fake money.
For their very important decisions, the players consulted our very important “critic’s corner.” Artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw, who created the art world-themed game, MC’ed — or tried to, as said “critic’s corner” became increasingly unruly since someone relocated an entire bottle of “Jeff Koons Don Perignon” to our table.
The event served as an indoor extension of the artists’ ongoing Jen and Paul’s One Stop Shopping Souvenir City and Chelsea Bus Tours — which ANIMAL profiled in a video earlier this season — a hilarious mobile project, part performance, part critique, all fun. But this was serious, serious decision making right here.
“Too heavy and not dead enough,” Corinna Hirsch advised decidedly against buying Richard Serra. Then, Rhett Jones and Paddy Johnson argued heatedly about James Franco, meanwhile “Klaus Biesenbach” (Sean Capone) remained completely in character, even without his giant Klaus mask.
As these games usually take a long time, at some point a “sudden death” round was initiated. I have no idea what the rules were, but suddenly the gallery teams accosted us with their artist rosters and opulent bribes, and the winner was decided. I think it was Postmasters.
We were promised “oversize Chelsea Community Chess and Lucky cards that have different art world scenarios, paying money for an Art Basel booth, tax evasion fraud” but we got much more. That’s because we’re really important. And the art world is fun like a game. And you can totally, totally win. Fuck yeah, cosplay.
(Photos: Marina Galperina/ANIMALNewYork)
