Leigha MasonAt 23, Leigha Mason doesn’t lack for confidence: “I know I’m young but I know I’m right,” she says.
The painter and filmmaker is one of four artists in their twenties who run 1:1, a gallery and events space at 121 Essex Street. The second-floor nook is meant to be a “nucleus for contemporary activity,” said Ms. Mason (it’s also her sometime home: there’s a shower in the pink-lit bathroom).
What kind of activity is she talking about? “Before 1:1, I was doing a lot of aggressive performances with anti-capitalist sentiment,” she said. Now she’s focused more on the “social possibilities of bodies navigating each other, space, and diverse practices.” Her latest work was “Sketches for Baal,” with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, the gender-bending performance artist and leader of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. And this Thursday at 8 p.m., one of her partners in the gallery, Whitney Vangrin, will perform the second installment of a “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” trilogy.
We caught up with Ms. Mason before the opening of 1:1’s current show, Nathile Provosty’s first solo exhibition of abstract paintings, “Book of Hours.”
What’s the current state of downtown art?
Most of it sucks, some of it is relevant. A lot of what is relevant isn’t necessarily visible. Most of the art scene is market-driven, which is very boring to me. It seems that for a lot of people, the “downtown” moniker just adds a sort of cultural capital to an already dispassionate and insular world. But there are people who are doing interesting and important things, either because we are committed to ideas or beauty or whatever (we are compelled to do it) and/or because we get pleasure from it.
I think playful fun is a really underrated subversive tools in the art scene, and in general. I am interested in projects that are actively pleasurable, and I see this as inherently political. I do sometimes have to consciously rupture the art scene monotony or else I would kill myself; every chance I get I go skydiving or scrape together travel opportunities.
What do you hope to achieve with Gallery 1:1?
I think what is exciting about art is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be utilitarian or role-abiding, and so it can ask questions about human potentiality and poetics, and also provide very real ruptures in the everyday. These are the kinds of things we hope to achieve with 1:1. We really want to host a space that can be a nucleus for contemporary activity. We want to work with people and practices that are wildly playful and wildly sincere.
What downtown artists should we know about.
Everyone who will be in 1:1’s group show in January, all the artists involved with CAGE, Elektra KB, SSION, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Nic Guagnini, and go see Casey Jane Ellison and Aboveground Animation at New Museum on Nov. 17.
Does “downtown” still mean anything?
You can always go…
What did you do for Sandy?
During the Hurricane I was at Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s apartment watching prison shows on Nat Geo. Gen lives on the sixth floor of a building on the Manhattan edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, so s/he has an amazing view of the city. It was really intense to watch it all go black in an instant, with the Empire State Building still lit up in the center.
How do you feel about Obama’s reelection?
I am so relieved that it wasn’t that dunce psychopath Mitt Romney and creepy Paul Ryan, but I’d prefer to destroy the entire power vocabulary in America. In the contempo meantime, though, I cast my vote (for Obama) prior to the fire.
What’s next for the gallery?
There will be a beautiful group exhibition, “ALL THE BEST PEOPLE,” in tandem with several events, running from Jan. 5 through Valentine’s Day. The participants are all contemporaries who make work that aligns with the conceptual underpinnings of 1:1. It will be such a multimedia, cross-discipline, and high-energy show.
“Nathlie Provosty: Book of Hours,” through Nov. 30 at 1:1, 132 Essex Street, (704) 904-9907
Correction, Nov. 13, 2012: The original version of this post was revised to correct errors. Ms. Vangrin’s performance is Thursday, not Wednesday, and Ms. Provosty’s show is open to the public, not by appointment only. Also, the original version misidentified Ms. Mason as French-born.
