Thought Experience New York (3/27/2023–5/20/2023)

Inspiration

The Thought Experience was a culmination of looking at a lot of art over the years, but the real catalyst was the 2022 Venice Biennale. This is where I learned a lot about art that affects someone but that one cannot own, otherwise known as “installation or biennale art.”

The pieces that inspired this exhibition the most:

• Felix Gonzalez Torres Perfect Lovers (saw at NY MOMA)
• Dragset and Elmgreen Powerless Structures Fig 117 (saw at Prada Foundation, Milan)
• Delcy Morelos Earthly Paradise (saw at Venice Biennale)
• Mauricio Catalan Comedian (saw at Art Basel Miami)

Before talking about pop conceptual art, the original concept was simply pop. Right before the Covid-19 pandemic, I began an outline of the 80’s Museum, a pop culture museum to memorialize the distinct era. During the pandemic my accountability partner, Lanie Zipoy, talked me through many of the ideas, exhibits, and pitfalls of the 80s Museum idea. Sadly, Lanie passed away midway through 2022. Right around this time, I met Anita Durst who asked me to join the board of ChaShaMa, a non profit organization that connects artists and entrepreneurs with vacant retail spaces and offered me a space to do an exhibition.

In January of 2023, while I was helping Paula Abdul’s Idle Eyes sunglass line launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and considering how I wanted to include her in the 80s Museum, I ran into Saryn Chorney, a former Penn classmate, who told me about her animal art practice and how I should help her find a space to exhibit via ChaShaMa.

The exhibition was not clear, however, Anita let me know that I would be getting the ChaShaMa marquee location of 1155 Avenue of the Americas, inside of Times Square. Spiderman once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” This location was a great power and it was up to me to bear that even greater responsibility. I thought about a film Okja that I saw that was so powerful it made me give up eating meat. I realized that art is also a powerful tool and while we like to think we are rational creatures, if we can find a way to touch someone emotionally we can move mountains.

On the plane ride back sitting in a Spirit Airlines non reclining Middle Seat with no Wifi and no video, I only had Ben Davis’ essay to read: Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy. When I got off the plane, the reassessment was complete, I was going to put together a pop conceptual art exhibition.

The pop conceptual art exhibition would start with the individual and end with the world. Each piece would be constructed of materials that anyone could purchase, and needed to feel accessible in nature. On March 27, 2023, the raw space was procured and Thought Experience was born, on April 6, 2023, we had our first opening, and on May 20, 2023, we closed the exhibition at 1155 Avenue of the Americas and let Thought Experience live on in this document.

Enter Thought Experience

Raising the Bar

Getting into Harvard has always been a well kept secret similar to Coca Cola. However when you get sued as Harvard did in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard,you have to disclose all your cards. The case was brought about by Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, whose suit alleged that Harvard University discriminated against Asian Americans. “Harvard used an SAT score cutoff of 1310 for white students, 1350 for Asian American females, and 1380 for Asian American males. There were gasps in the courtroom when this evidence was revealed at trial.” To be clear I am a fan of the diverse university class that I attended. However, I do think that if you are an “on the fence” candidate or do not live up to the stereotype that you are assigned, that is unfair.

70 points does not seem like much for male candidates. However, if we are to look at the same ratios in terms of high jump, we reach a similar conclusion. Javier Sotomayor set the current world record in 1993 of 8 ft 0.25 inches (the only human to clear 8 feet). If this is the top of the bar (8 foot), then the red bar is at 6 foot 11 inches. The blue bar is at 6 foot 6 inches. The analogy would make 8 feet a perfect score of 1600. When illustrated as a high jump the 70 point difference is 5 inches or almost half a foot! Any track and field athlete will tell you that 5 inches in high jump is significant especially when each ⅛ of an inch is clawed and fought for!

Blood Runs Deep

There are four major blood groups determined by the presence or absence of two antigens, A and B, on the surface of red blood cells. In addition to these antigens, a protein (the Rh factor), can be either present (+) or absent (–), creating the 8 most common blood types (A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+, AB-). It is impossible to tell what race one might be from blood although there is a greater probability of compatibility for rare blood disorders. In this exhibit, all of the data shown are red herrings. No matter what we do, who we are, and how we act, we are all red inside.

Best Selfie #3

New York is a very photogenic city. Everywhere you turn people are taking pictures. With the advent of the camera phone, people have started taking selfies in “interesting places.” With this piece, it is called the third best place in New York City to take a selfie: The middle of the bike lane during rush hour right in front of the exhibition space.

How many times have you been walking down the street only to bump into someone lost in their phone? This selfie screen allows you to be safe while taking as many pictures of yourself in consistent lighting. Avoid screaming cyclists, annoyed pedestrians, and swerving drivers, as you transport yourself to the only place that matters: getting the perfect picture of yourself.

As for what the first and second best places are? The first best place to take a selfie in New York City is at the bottom of the Hudson Yards escalator. The new Hudson Yards subway station features an escalator that takes nearly 3 minutes to ride to the bottom. Step off the moving staircase and snap that perfect picture of yourself! The second best place is as the subway doors are closing on the express track on the overcrowded 4,5 trains at Grand Central Station. Take your time and while you wait for the perfect lighting tell people to stop and smell the roses.

4 Years is a Long Time

This was a fun piece because it not only drew the biggest crowd but it also universally gave people the same feelings. Nearly everyone that came to the exhibition said that the piece caused them the same feeling: anxiety. People that looked in through the window experienced the same anxiety and some people just wanted to move the vase or wine glass (but interestingly not the statue or plate) into the center of the stool. The artifacts placed on the stool are fragile but random. While the placement of the pieces drives anxiety, the randomness of the pieces should also bring that about. More anxiety is derived when there is a crazy bear on the loose ripping people’s heads off than if a deranged sibling is out there trying to become the sole heir.

Future Bath

It is estimated that there are more than 24 trillion pieces of microplastics, tiny plastic particles that result from both commercial product development and the breakdown of larger plastics, in our oceans. From the ocean they have already found their way into our food and water; studies have shown that we actually consume a credit card size worth of microplastics weekly. Further, since less than 10% of plastic packaging actually gets recycled, society hits new highs annually on how much virgin plastic is created for single use packaging and other modern conveniences. At this rate, our future bath will truly be in a tub of plastic bottle caps.

In Equality We Trust

“All men are created equal” or are we? In this piece we see one cube on one side, while a number of cubes cannot seem to even come close to outweighing the single cube. An entrepreneur said to me that this reminds them of focus. The single cube being of the utmost focus that it outweighs a lot of unfocused individuals. I like this interpretation. However the original intent was to showcase income inequality with the name of the cube possibly being Bernaut, Jeff, or Elon.

Government 2023

Does money influence government and policy? Possibly. Here we depict two ballot boxes filled with money. Visitors could ask for $3,300 which is the federally mandated maximum individual contribution and deposit it into either or both boxes. As more money fills up either box, gravity pulls the other box down. However, as in the case with our government, lots of money fills both boxes, but nothing ever gets done. Every local politician was invited to try to influence the outcome, but none showed up.

Despite this, I am going to vote based on how this tug of war ended; on May 20, 2023 at 9pm and it ended Democratic, as shown in the images; the amount of cash was split about 65% blue and 35% red.

The next two exhibits show how money clouds judgment. We can ban books and quell the first amendment but we cannot stop the second amendment and the deaths that it brings to the minds we are trying to protect in the first place.

The Pen is Mightier

The first amendment, freedom of speech, is getting weaker with the government especially in the state of Florida leading the charge. The following books were banned in that state or possibly other states within the last 5 years:

Satanic Verses, This Book is Gay, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, Gender Queer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Communist Manifesto, The Handmaid’s Tale

Most of the books are about sexual orientation, racism, adultery, and religion.

Sport in America

A new pastime has been overtly born in America. Level one: shoot the deer; level two: shoot the bird, and level three: shoot the bear. As we round the bend, we get to the advanced levels, four and five, of shooting the school boy and then yourself.

Everyday in America there is a shooting. In fact shooting has now replaced baseball as America’s new pastime as there are more shootings in America than baseball games. Major League Baseball has 30 teams each playing 162 games for the regular season or 2,430 games; Wild Card, Division Series, League Championship Series and World Series consist of best of 5 or 7 games, if they all go the maximum distance of 5 or 7 that’s another 53 total games for a maximum of 2,483 games. In 2021, statistics show that there were close to 21,000 gun deaths in the United States. The media has had to create a new definition otherwise they would constantly be reporting on shootings. A “mass shooting” means three or more people are killed by a gun in a single incident in a single location. There were 647 mass shootings in 2022.

Quarter Pound Hamburger

A hamburger is made from beef and beef is the meat of a cow. A cow lives for as little as 18 months, but typically between 24 and 30 months, before it is slaughtered and turned into beef. Cows reach their peak weight and muscle development at around 24 months of age, and delaying slaughter beyond this point can result in lower meat quality and increased fat content. The cow is not 100% edible meat. Much of the cow consists of bones, organs, blood, skin, and intestines; only 40% of the cow can be processed into beef.

Cows are animals. Everyday they drink, eat, poop, pee, fart, and burp. Or scientifically, we can say that they consume water and feed, while creating methane, manure, and urine. Water wise, cows take in between 1–2 gallons per day of water per 100 pounds of total body weight (not edible meat weight). When we do the math for all of the other inputs and outputs including intermediate byproducts (i.e. using water to create feed), we have the following needed to create a quarter pound hamburger: about 500 gallons of water (ranges have been seen to be 450–625 gallons of water), 2 ⅝ pounds of feed, ⅙ pounds of unusable byproducts (like intestines and organs), 22 pounds of manure, 1 gallon of urine, and 1/16 pound of methane gas.

All of these inputs as well as a minimum of 18 months of a cow’s life goes into your lunch today, that quarter pound hamburger without cheese.

So Far So Close

Data shows that the global temperature is rising causing the polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise. This temperature rise affects other aspects of the environment and has caused volatile weather in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the South Pacific. The country’s unprecedented number of cyclones, typhoons, and tsunamis has given it the title of the highest disaster risk in the world. In 2021, the country launched its call for the UN International Court of Justice to provide an “advisory opinion” on the legal responsibility of governments to fight the climate crisis, arguing that climate change has become a human rights issue for Pacific Islanders. Finally at the end of March 2023, the resolution for an advisory opinion passed by majority, backed by more than 130 countries. The US and China, did not express support, but did not object meaning the measure passed by consensus.

In this piece, we have placed two trays and four whisky balls of ice on the top container. As the ice melts, the water travels along the tube and eventually drips into the medium sized container which holds our representative island nation. Only after the island nation is completely submerged will the water travel out via the tube to the largest bucket which holds a representation of Manhattan Island of New York City in the United States. For 54 days in a row, ice was placed at 4pm and the exhibition was open for 5 hours everyday in the early evening hours; on some days there were more people than others. The space was relatively cool. It took about 4 weeks (30 days) before any water even entered the second tube. However once it entered the second tube the water came into the Manhattan container relatively quickly. At the end of the exhibition, the water level rose to about an inch and a half above the Flatiron building, or the equivalent of about 40 stories in any office high rise which would put most of Manhattan other than the tallest skyscrapers underwater.

This is Good Art Because

What makes good art? If the Mona Lisa wasn’t stolen would it be considered good art? Does Peggy Guggenheim’s patronization of Jackson Pollock make him a good artist? If you are an artist represented by the Gagosian Gallery is your work considered good? These are three reasons for good art as depicted in this triptych; there are a whole series of reasons as to why something is good art, which will be released in the future. All of these questions arose after an event where someone told me that they enjoyed the event but they didn’t like the art. Upon pressing further, the reason they didn’t like the art was because everything was less than $12,000.

Therefore in order to be sure that this triptych is not mistaken for bad art, its asking price is $450,420,000 which would make it the most expensive piece of art ever to be sold. (The prior most expensive piece of art, the Salvador Mundi, attributed to Leonardo DaVinci, sold at Christie’s New York on November 15, 2017, for $450,312,500 (a hammer price of $400 million and a buyer’s premium (Christie’s fees) of $50,312,500)). With this asking price, it will accomplish all three reasons self referentially: since it will be expensive (9 figure expensive), only a billionaire would be able to afford it, and with those fees, the salesperson will definitely be pushing this in order to pay down the loans on their master’s degree.

Other Images from the Exhibition

Thought Experience will live on! There’s been some interest from other institutions to show the exhibition. Stay tuned to find out what’s next! 🙂Every night is an opening!

Thank you

The Thought Experience was a collaborative effort and I would like to thank the following people (in no particular order): Saryn Chorney, Anita Durst, Lanie Zipoy, Daron Jenkins, Joshua Gosselin, Donald Jackson, Kylie Kendrick, Laura Alvear Roa, Ana Stjepanovic, Justin Jones, Gary Su, Taylor Knoche, Marissa Feinberg, Helena Simon, Jennifer Gregoriu, Caroline Waxler, Ashwini Anburajan, Jesse Tendler, Marissa Arciola, Jill Fox, Christian Alcantara, Kelly Hadous, Tom Opdyke, Margaret LaBombard, Irina Gulbrandsen, Adam Edwards, Jacob Shapiro, Caitlin Adkins, and many more. I’m also grateful to ChaShaMa, Famecast, and Paula Abdul for setting in motion a unique set of events that led to this and most likely cannot be replicated. Finally, I want to thank my sister, my mom and dad, and Milo.