Going up across from Gagosian--"sixteen limited-edition riverfront homes with en-suite sky garages." Every New Yorker's fantasy is to have their car on the same floor as their apartment. "Limited edition"--genius marketing in an art district. (Email from MA: "I take it this means that each 'home' has an elevator into which the home-owner drives his car? And the elevator then carries said car and owner to their home with 'en-suite garage'? Or do they just lift the car up with a crane, stick it into the garage, and then wall the hole over so the owner can come and admire his or her car when he or she feels like it without any thought for driving it anywhere? In either case, this strikes me as being one of the most extreme examples of conspicuous consumption in my experience.")
Below, a nice piece by Pier Paolo Calzolari, from 1971, at Luhring Augustine, in a museum quality group show of Italian conceptual/povera art from the '60s through the '80s: Pistoletto, Merz, Boetti, etc. This sculpture has a refrigeration unit keeping half the piece frozen (with no dripping)--I like the way the metal supporting the neon words droops on the right like limp fabric.
Update: The blog VVork presents recycled versions of work that looks like this. A VVork artist, though, would have the neon "art adjectives" spell out some world-saving political message, or wouldn't have the subtle touch of the limp metal, which serves no purpose with regard to saving the world through art. Almost always the work of this nature from 30-40 years ago is better, tougher, and stranger than the nth completely unconscious iteration of it.
