You’ve probably been to Deitch Projects Gallery in Soho before, but you might not recognize the place this time. Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe combined their creative powers to create Black Acid Co-Op – a meth den, Chinese herbal shop and a Native American conservation site in the gallery space.
Actually, there is more. The whole gallery has been transformed into a labyrinth of different bizarre rooms filled with wigged heads, burnt furniture, trash, pictures, jars, books, etc. Different rooms, connected by axed holes in the walls, speak differently to their visitors.
The drug-lab-gone-wrong part of the house creates a terribly realistic and scary feeling of tragedy, making one grow quiet. Empty flu medicine tubes, a toilet – with a crap still in it, glass pipes and homemade drug-boiling machines covered in dust and ash reveal a life regular gallery goers do not usually see. Next there is an empty room with the wallpaper all scratched to pieces. This room smells old. Through another hole, there’s a clean and almost luxurious red-carpeted picture gallery, and through another hole there is a book library. All the book covers are ripped off and replaced with handwritten titles.
Besides emotional impact, every room seems very labor intensive. A whole miniature city was built within the space. The Black Acid Co-Op fits so many different eras and socio-economic climates. Upstairs there is a museum-like wood covered room where the glass jars are filled with yucky liquids and telephone books. There is a taxidermied wolf with his cub and cozy furs for those who would like to take a seat. It feels nice in here. Walk two flights down, and you are in erotic-exotic Chinese herb shop, with its cold white halogen lights and signs, TV screens and posters.
With all this intense mess, Freeman and Lowe’s Black Acid Co-Op definitely evokes the feelings of awe and chock; it layers historical values, insanity, understandings of art, the high and the low. The artists medley together the most juxtaposed architectural and urban solutions under one roof.
Image, by Greg Kessler, taken from the show’s website.
