A Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld-hosted opening is always an all-star affair, and last night was no exception, as a bulk of New York's arty crowd made their way to the industrial 560 Washington Street space to check out Nicolas Pol's exhibit, "Sick Atavus of the New Blood. The pop-up gallery featured an array of paintings, drawings, and sculptures incorporating images and text from a variety of sources including Klee, Goya, Michael Jackson, and Marvel Comics to produce an altogether abstract mish-mosh.

A cunning linguist of sorts, Pol told us that "Atavus" is actually a dead Latin word: "It means genital irritation. It's a sick genital irritation with new blood... To me, it's just fun. It sounded good, you know, to talk about the eternal return of shit." Atavus is also the name of the humanoid alien race in Earth: Final Conflict, showing the artist's love for science fiction. "As a young kid I was really bad at mathematics and science, so [science fiction] is sort of like taking revenge. It's a way of living the life of an inventor that I'm not, through painting
 
Nearly as engaging as the art was the crowd, which included PAPERMAG favorite Hannah Bronfman (with BF/rapper Asher Roth by her side), W editor Stefano Tonchi having a meeting of the one-letter-magazine minds with V editor Stephen Gan, and proud mama Carine Roitfeld, who was adorably showing off the details of her son's project to friends.
 
The exhibition runs through May 22nd.

Photos by Susan Korn