~15 WARREN . .


SEAN VEGEZZI, the 3rd curator of 15 WARREN STREET, along with . . his Tribeca childhood pals: ABELINE COHEN, and ANDREW KASS.


if you don’t think a . . VOID, could be the heart of the matter, think again.

it almost looked . . blood-like, from a distance.
a detached, cut-out, human organ – blown up, hyper scale.
kept alive, on mechanical life-support.
in the basement.

sci-fi does come to mind,
like-wise, human ‘squishy’ ness, our fragile bio state vs the eternal beating heart, king of all earthly metaphors.


this is SEAN VEGEZZI’s site specific piece for the show.
how so much excitement could lie in . . such ‘silence’ . . . is also the heart of the matter.

so much laid bare.
history. rawness. spatial definitions . . undone.

so much open-fisted, plastic/composition field . . ‘questioning’, and a twisting of perception, a twisting of imagination, a veritable, beating . . ‘heart’ in the center of the show.

it speaks to: unbound.
a state of reaching, of reaching beyond the usual visual ‘arts’ parameters . . by, ironically going to the very bottom.


the subterranean, on fire.
take away whatever metaphors you wish, they are aplenty, and they are yours . . for the asking.

actual ‘light’ – was a big factor at play, in the show as a whole.

this coppery color on fire, was even more interesting if you actually knew Mr. Vegezzi’s earlier, main body of work . . photographs taken in the deep forbidden underground infrastructure, the subterranean tunnels of the NYC / MTA – the subway system . . those photographs had a very eerie sour candy-like translucent / lime green light . . to them.

from green comes copper.
from copper comes green, exposed to the elements.
in your imagination, move from the subterranean . . to the old church spires, all around you, in a big city like this,
the core and the spires . . are very inter-related. the hidden basement cores, and the crowning roof spires, and they move with us, stationary and inter-related, just like time does: past, present, future. though one is as man-made, as the other is physics . . on the path of our planetary orbit.

the deep basements and slightly wobbling towers – the man-made structures that mark cities, and stay rooted in place, as the planet turns, and spins.

unless they are ‘downed’. of course.

the artificial light glowing up like embers, from the excavation . . revealing the site-specific history, but also, art-wise: breaking down the usual white box walls, destroying most flat non-engaging surfaces, and challenging the usual art history ‘perceptions’ !!

you walked through this show, you didn’t just . . view it.

you walked around Mr. Vegezzi’s ‘pit’, and you saw a continuum though space, vis a vie the construction bags lined up against the wall.

this was a break-down and break-away show, no doubt about it, the best of the best of the underground – literally popping up, and taking on all comers. esp the institutionalized . . ones.
NYC has a great history, of this. of art. of new generations popping up, and breaking down barriers.

this was a ‘take-down’.

it took as its stated target . . the current glut of no-where art, with very little meaning or plastic ‘freshness’, that dominates the scene, and its many no-where commentators, profusely citing paragraphs of art history, as if that meant . . anything really, about the work at hand.

as if nothing has changed in a million years.

not even a little thing like . . the digital revolution.

not even a thing like growing up in the shadow of destruction, while the world as a whole, scientifically and culturally . . is on the cusp of ‘discovery’ and ‘communication’ . . so beyond, our ancestors’ broadest imaginations.

15 WARREN STREET, 10007

MORE PIX, to follow.

PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH