Art in Real Time

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For his current untitled exhibit at Gavin Brown's enterprise, Spencer Sweeney has transformed the gallery into a "living theater," an ever-fluctuating lab where ideas and experiments literally bounce off the walls -- and floors. In his first solo show in nearly five years in New York, Sweeney decided to flip the notion of what an art show should be by meditating on the creative process itself. Mirroring his own work studio and habits, Sweeney has also been painting and sleeping there. Taking cues from disparate philosophies and theories ranging from Theatre du Grand Guignol of fin de siècle Paris, methods of legendary Polish theater director Jerzy Growtoski, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, noted agnostic mystic Robert Anton Wilson, occultist extraordinaire Aleister Crowley, Marcel Duchamp's abandon of "retinal art," and Hollywood heavyweight Robert Evans, Sweeney created a world wherein art imitates the artist.

In the foyer of GBE, where optical illusion-inducing grids and dots line the walls, two battery-operated toy parrots perch on pedestals face to face, squawking every now and again. Just in front of the parrots is a TV (upon which several ZZ Top Matryoshka dolls sit), which plays surveillance footage documenting a gallery-goer who recently stole a camera (part of the original installation) in broad daylight. This act of thievery is tolerated with a shrug by Sweeney -- it's all in the spirit of creativity feeding creativity. "I don't know why they didn't also take the tripod. It's more expensive. Well, at least they contributed a good video."

As you meander deeper into the gallery, you find yourself in a space that's somewhere between the gallery you first entered and the studio of the artist whose work you are seeing. The room breathes rather thickly with art supplies, empty canvases, canvases that have been recently worked on, all amid piles of objects and artifacts (mannequin legs, old TV sets with snowy flickers, empty beer cans taped together, kimonos, stereo systems, records, fennel on a chopping board, bottles of red wine, pillows and blankets) and older works hanging on the wall (one of them with a three-foot-tall joint protruding). It's a lot to take in. Oh, almost forgot… there's also the Christmas tree left over from the gallery's holiday party and lots more of them that Sweeney dragged in from the street just the other day. This was all when I visited over this past weekend. I can't vouch for what's there now. Things are in constant motion as they would be if you lived there.

Sweeney, 36, was born and raised in Philadelphia and moved to New York City in the late '90s where he soon became part of the winsome inner circle of the legendary American Fine Arts gallery in SoHo, led by the late, charismatic and wonderful Colin de Land. He played drums in Actress, a seminal art-damaged band alongside Lizzi Bougatsos, she of Gang Gang Dance fame. In 2006, he found himself part of the Whitney Biennial "Day for Night" brat pack. And since then, the artist-slash-DJ has had his hands quite full as one of the co-owners of the downtown nightclub Santos Party House, which opened in 2008, and kept his artist profile relatively low save for the solo shows he did at the Modern Institute in Glasgow in 2007 and at Jack Hanley in San Francisco in 2008.

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Knowing that he only had a little over a month to put together this show (he was asked to participate in late October; the show opened on December 9), Sweeney grabbed at things that had been collecting around him and in his head. "The idea started with studying different mediums and practices which seem far off from each other and not directly associated with each other," Sweeney says. He had been reading Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and become interested in recursive looping theories. Imagery inspired by GEB permeates the show (i.e. the two parrots). "As I brought all these elements together they started to associate and reference one another and converge into this commentary on the creative act or what it means to create. That's what I was hoping would happen and I think it is starting to happen." He then recites Robert Evans's famous line: "Luck doesn't just happen, it's when opportunity meets preparation."

The focal point of the show, however, is a series of self-portraits that Sweeney has been painting nightly at the gallery. In keeping with the theatricality of the show and playing with the notion that life, after all, is a stage, from portrait to portrait, Sweeney goes from a kimonoed Caucasian guy to a baseball-capped dude to a Bowler-hatted Bob Fosse dancer to a clown. And though whimsy and satire come through, these portraits exude a sense of exhaustion and nihilism that is hard on the eyes. His painting style in its illustrative boldness and lurid colors has been compared to that of Martin Kippenberger. But even in its recklessness there's usually something delicate -- like two fingers holding a teacup -- in his treatment, which is light and playful.

"It's kind of like this black wall and you are self-conscious and you don't wanna do it," says Sweeney of the moments right before putting paint on the canvas. "I have a certain notion that there's something at the other side of it so I push my face into this black wall and go through this period of darkness until it turns into something I can understand. And when I come through the other side it starts making sense to me and I can see why I'm doing it and it takes on a direction and purpose for me. Sometimes I have this idea that the black wall somehow equates or is comparable to being born or something. I don't entirely remember of being born but I have feeling of pain and fear. This whole creative process -- beyond creating your own work but also being a creation is one of pain."

Despite the heady concepts, there is something almost Larry David-esque about the exhibit -- an art show about making art, the process. But rather than coming off as overly self-indulgent, Sweeney is able to follow through convoluted ideas with solid skills, deft execution and enough humor, thank God. The process of creativity, whether experiencing it as the creator or a witness, and as manifested through Sweeney's rather extraordinary paintings and collections of odds and ends, is not without discomfort and trials. But once you come out on the other side of the black wall, you can sail on for a while.

The show comes down on January 16, this Saturday. To cap off, or to sound off the second leg of what seems to be an ever-evolving project that has just begun, there will be two nights of celebration with performances by Andrew W.K. on Friday and a "Physical Theater Rock Opera" and Endless Boogie on Saturday.

Gavin Brown's enterprise, 620 Greenwich St., Tue. - Sat. 10 p.m. - 6 p.m.