Bash Compactor: Telly Vision

On Saturday night, Half Gallery played host to an intimate gathering celebrating a film put together by Downtown stalwart Leo Fitzpatrick. The scene contrasted sharply from his friend Ryan McGinley’s opening a week prior, which saw chaotic crowds that shut down the block and required the fire department to intervene.

This had more the feeling of a friendly neighborhood hangout. A small projector showed the film on a wall in the gallery. There was no big ceremony, no pretension. People sat on the floor and friends dropped in out as the seven-minute film received multiple screenings. The event was so laid back, even Fitzpatrick missed the first screening.

Culled from different films that focused on art, the clip satirized how Hollywood represents artists in contemporary films. “It’s an Oscar-ceremony movie montage of bad art films,” said Bill Powers, one of the gallery’s owners. His business partner James Frey, made a hasty exit from the back room without partaking in the viewing. F.T.B.S.I.T.T.T.D, indeed.

The montage started off with Benicio Del Toro’s character in Basquiat lecturing the movie’s namesake on how to get famous in the art world. Other scenes included Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo having respective breakdowns, Jackson Pollack having a corny breakthrough and that crazy chick messing with Lebowski.

The video originally opened a Nate Loweman show in Europe, but this was its U.S. debut, joked Powers. The tiny gallery had already been exhibiting Fitzpatrick’s artworks, mash-ups of pages from old novels referred to as title-page poetry.

Outside, the guest of honor joked about Neckface poking fun at the size of the exhibit while art-party fixtures like Dan Colen, Leslie Arfin and one of the guys from The Virgins congratulated him.

After a few mini-beers, Fitzpatrick told me how the video came to be. Loweman had to do a presentation for Richard Prince and didn’t really like the idea of making a speech, so he made a slideshow. When Fitzpatrick was asked to do an introduction for Loweman, “I ripped off his idea of appropriating images to represent Prince,” he said. “It’s a rip-off of a rip-off, a great way to get out of public speaking.”

Were some of the clips reminiscent of things he had seen his art world friends go through?  “I didn’t intend to poke fun at that, but it certainly does,” he said. “There are moments that come up that are so ridiculous, you just laugh, definitely.”