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EGG: How did you come up with the idea of the Crest Hardware Show? GP: Me and Caroline [Coxe, co-founder of Flipside Gallery in Williamsburg] were just walking down the street and I just had this idea that I should ask Manny [Franquinha, owner of Crest Hardware] if I could have a little show of about twelve artists' work right in the store. So, right that day, I went and I asked Manny and he gave me the front window. EGG: And how has it turned out over the years? GP: Well, this show, for me, is a wonderful thing. It brings the community together and takes people away from all the seriousness and calculation of their other art forms. Most everyone who joins the show does something else, doesn't make work like they do for this. And it takes them out of themselves, and brings them into the realm of pure play. And then at the same time it gives them this venue to talk about commodity and advertising and all the issues that come with the products. EGG: How is a show in a hardware store different from other places that exhibit art? GP: It takes people away from the whole gallery exhibit scene -- where things are taken out of the artists' studio and placed in light rooms and given a special sort of veneration of the object. In the hardware store show, things are brought down to a level that almost anyone can appreciate. These are stealth art objects that creep into your consciousness without you being prepared. When you go into a gallery, you're completely prepared for an art experience. Here, you're just shopping, and suddenly some non-sequitur creeps into your field of vision and invades your consciousness from a whole different angle. It's invaluable and it reaches thing. And it, it acts on people who never would be found in a gallery. EGG: Talk about this object: the "Titanic Toilet Pull." GP: Well, obviously there's a little dark humor in this piece. But it is also about the commodification of disasters, the amount of advertising dollars generated by the Titanic and the movie, where the loss of life, an astonishing disaster, sells. So, here I'm offering a person the chance to reenact this historical tragic event with every flush. I am really poking fun at how advertising treats such an event. EGG: Do you think it's important to reach an audience in a hardware store? GP: Yes, I do, because there's a lot of attitude, in society in general that's anti-art. People have preconceptions about what art is and the culture that surrounds it. And it effectively blocks the experience out of their lives. So, it's a good thing if you can sneak it under their shirt and let it act on them. And maybe they'll develop an appreciation of it. |
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