What are they? you watching?
A mysterious art show is tricking New Yorkers into going outside — and looking each other in the eye.
The wild exhibit, “Bobby Anspach: Nothing Beautiful,” features a pair of strange contraptions — tangles of wires, lights and colored pom-poms — that look like something a mad scientist built out of junk or a child designed using materials in them. playroom.
Take note: the late artist Anspach had a penchant for pom-poms.
Visitors to the dazzling display, made up of two fantastical installations from his wild series Places for Constant Eye Contact, are paired up and enter an enclosed tent covered in vibrant pom-poms, with two seats facing each other. the other.
Fully immersed participants gaze at each other while wrapped in pom-pom blankets and encased in tall, hanging helmets covered in fuzzy orbs.
Or one can choose a single view and lie in a hospital bed wrapped in a tiger blanket under a dome made of—you guessed it—pom-poms, then look up into a mirror amid a kaleidoscope of colors with flashing lights, wires and tape pouring from every angle.
“It’s kind of like psychedelics or meditation, where it’s like you can just be transported to another place,” Sara Griffin, a spokeswoman for the weekend-only Meatpacking District exhibit, told The Post, explaining that the experience almost beguiles guests. meditating.
It’s a truly immersive installation.
“You’re really getting into the art here,” Griffin said. “This kind of sustained eye contact is about a larger social connection and love for yourself and everyone else.”
Reservations can be made online, but many people wander off the street when the strange scene catches their eye through the glass windows – and they end up looking into the eyes of a stranger in the tent.
Sara Atri was pulled into the space by her 11-year-old daughter Tamara, an art fanatic, who was mesmerized by the pieces and sat patiently on the floor as she waited her turn, mesmerized by the artistic spectacle.
The mother-daughter duo visiting from Mexico City sat across from each other, barely distinguishable from each other amid the pom-poms during their mind-blowing experience.
“It makes you travel through the colors and suddenly disappear,” the elder Atri told The Post. “It’s amazing.”
While everyone is led through the experience by a guide – mostly actors trained to manage everything it entails – you’re given minimal information about what to expect. Put an eye patch in one eye, put a pair of headphones over your ears, listen to a curated playlist, and stare straight ahead until the guide picks you up after 3 1/2 minutes.
Visitor Anna Hogan had a “powerful,” “surreal” experience unlike anything she had ever encountered, she said, describing her solo experience as “entering a dream or a hallucinogenic journey.”
“It was fascinating to see myself in that space,” the Upper East Sider told The Post. “It invited deep self-reflection while also making me feel part of something much bigger.”
Some have ended their meeting dancing with joy – while other emotional visitors have left in tears.
Two people who are particularly affected by the stay in space are Bobby Anspach’s parents, Jane and Bob, who are doing what they can to honor the memory of their son, Robert J. “Bobby” Anspach.
The artist struggled with his mental health and drowned in Beacon, New York, in July 2022 at the age of 34.
His parents created the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation and have taken his installations around New York to continue his life’s work.
“He was a giver and wanted to give this gift of hope to people,” Jane told The Post. “He thought it could heal the world.”
The exhibit is open to the public Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at Azure, 38 Little W. 12th St., through November. 10.
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Image Source : nypost.com