SPIKE ART MAGAZINE
Art in the Afterlife of the Rave
This year, I decided to focus on the pop-up shows and performances happening on the sidelines, which is where I decided the real action was happening. The only fair I braved was SPRING/BREAK, which focuses on more offbeat works from local artists. There, I ran into Gage Spex, co-founder of New York’s seminal queer party palace The Spectrum. It was surreal to see Gage outside the nightlife spaces where they typically reign over the dance floor in face paint and avant-garde alienware. “Oh, I decided to go with a little light drag,” they said coyly, spinning around in a 60s housewife dress.
Gage was making their curatorial debut at the fair, presenting a solo show called “Hostile Home” by the artist Kendalle Getty, who arrived in billowing pink sleeves and neon green hair. Getty’s mother, Cynthia Beck, was the mistress of composer and oil heir Gordon Getty, and Kendalle only discovered her status as a “bastard princess” (as she refers to herself in her Instagram bio) when she was twelve. “Hostile Home” is a semiotic analysis of family, belonging, and privilege, informed by Getty’s struggle to assimilate her father’s true identity. “To smack one’s head against the ceiling of one’s privilege is a necessary experience,” she told Dazed.
Unlike the unruly glamor of The Spectrum, which always felt like the palatial living room of the Brooklyn queer community, Getty’s work offered an antagonistic vision of “home”: armchairs spiked with nails, a messy table of half-eaten food, a mirror engraved with Taylor Swift lyrics (“It’s Me, Hi. I’m the Problem”). A TV in the corner displayed a short film scene of a person giving a blowjob. “I love this already,” said Katie Rex, entering the booth. The erstwhile organizer of New York techno/fetish party Bound, Rex had also recently pivoted to a new daytime role as the arts and lifestyle editor at Document Journal.
Photo by Esteban Schimpf
