During my time as I stood posted on the sidewalk outside last night’s opening of “The Patriot,” a 200+ artist, 100 percent bonkers open-submission group show at the Lower East Side Gallery O’Flaherty’s, I heard a few variations of the same chorus: If the police showed up so quickly, it must be a pretty good party.
Nor were there only one or two officers. At the top there were several team cars, and at least five policemen lined up outside the room, who drew a line before opening and reaching capacity almost instantly. Gallery openings on the Lower East Side typically do not come with a line winding around the block and a crowd of officers. But O’Flaherty’s, who is less than a year old and directed by rising artist Jamian Juliano-Villani along with his friends, painter Billy Grant and musician Ruby Zarsky, is not typical.
It’s something else, something a little rare: It’s fun. And completely insane.
When I arrived at 8am, the queue was already in full force, with an almost comical number of people struggling to get through the doors. Outside the gallery, a distorter, flanked by neon-pink alien sculptures, wrapped his leg behind her head while progressive house music blared over a nearby boombox. I saw Grant close to the entrance and he led me through the crowd.
As I entered the darkened gallery, lit like a haunted house by the participants’ flashlights, I was bombarded with the first of at least seven art spaces, five of which were hung up in salon style with a dizzying array of works ranging from what looked like well-known contemporary art units to the kind of artist who, for example, could submit a rather straight-looking portrait of Tom Petty. I could not get hold of a checklist, so who really knows.
