Eat, Pray, Ramble
- The Art Fart
- Apr 5
- 4 min read
Every now & then a show comes along that just eats, as the kids say. Or serves. Prix Fixe at The Hole Tribeca manages to do both. A group show such as this can be a bit of a scrambled affair, at times — how does one unite the disparate visions of various artists? The curators at The Hole offers a simple organizing principle: a tasting menu. As an art monster who regularly takes bites of the art to determine the taste, I couldn’t have been more delighted at such an arrangement (& a little suspicious, has someone been following me around with salt & pepper & pencil & paper? I suppose I should be flattered!)
The opening room features crisply executed paintings of shoes & clothing by Alli Conrad, with Mary Janes angled around the opening of the next room, as if about to dip a toe. An appetizer? Or the bread to the sandwich this show, as a whole, forms? Beware, my friends, for the creamy, simple flow of Conrad’s paintings is prone to lure you into the Venus flytrap of the central room, where the captivating Anthropophora vases of Maxwell Mustardo lie in wait with scintillatingly-colored mouths agape in wonder or carnivorous hunger or with offerings of psychedelic wisdom (hard to say which) surrounded on every wall by the direct effects of their sweet, tropical poison: dizzying portraits from the inside of a vigorously-shaken kaleidoscope by Korean artist Younguk Yi. The titles of these portraits are like little New York School poems, bits of observational eavesdropping that lend a layer of story (& poetry) to their addled multi-eyed subjects, embodiments of our current era, an era that insists on tearing us in every direction — the “attention economy”, as it were, here personified.
The worst part of the attention economy, as anyone will tell you, is its nefarious manipulation of time — poof! Your whole day is lost scrolling online, then you realize you’ve been scrolling away your life. Welcome to the third room: “Getting Old Sucks” inscribed on the a totem-like sculpture of the same name by Theo Rosenblum, with a rotting, smiling pumpkin on top to drive the point home, deliciously self explanatory, & this beside a hotdog Möbius strip, Infinite Dawg (Françusi) — the title a play on that legendary modern dedication to the captivatingly absurd, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, combined with a reference to king-of-slick-modernity Brancusi &, of course, frankfurters. A reminder of mortality (Getting Old Sucks) next to an embodiment of infinity (Infinite Dawg): food for thought (literally). Surrounding these miniature monuments to human frailty are paintings by the Florentine artist Hugo Ciappi, with a collage-like style akin to Tara Booth: comic book-ish instruction manuals on how to be human. Taken with the momento mori of Rosenblum’s sculptures, Ciappi seems to offer a kind of thankful rebirth via the glowing, surprising wonder hidden in life’s most mundane details. Mmm, mundanity! Stuff of dreams!
The uniting aesthetic umami of the show lies in the glamour of the various textures — I couldn’t stop thinking about the knobby surfaces of the iridescent Anthropophora vases, the crunchy, chewy, sparkling candy at the center of the show. The textural variation radiates outwards from these, from Ciappi with his watery wisps to Conrad’s sleekly windswept clothes, all forming a kind of vortex around those sultry, fluorescent vases that resemble sprouting symmetrical fungi in an alien rainforest — take one too many bites & you’ll begin to resemble Yi’s trippy portraits, drunk on forbidden knowledge, blissed out, & seeing colors you never knew existed. Such are the risks of the daring art adventurer! See you on the other side!
—The Art Fart
Prix Fixe was on view at The Hole Tribeca February 15 - March 29, 2025.
Captions:
Alli Conrad, Mary Jane, 2023, oil on canvas.
Alli Conrad, Buster Brown, 2023, oil on canvas.
Younguk Yi, While Reading The Phrase, ‘To Safely Navigate Today, You Must Be Observant Of Your Surroundings’ In An Online Fortune Reading, I Was Struck By The Unexpected Memory Of Brushing My Teeth With Cleansing Foam This Morning—An Incident That Occurred In The Blink Of An Eye., 2024, acrylic on linen.
Younguk Yi, A Portrait Of A Man Locking Eyes With An Unrelenting, Almost Suffocating Stare—All In A Covert Effort To Discreetly Pick Their Nose., 2024, acrylic on linen.
Younguk Yi, A Portrait Of An Italian Friend Striving To Lead The Conversation Using Their Entire Body, 2024, acrylic on linen.
Younguk Yi, A Portrait Of A Dog Exposing Its Belly And Adopting An Excited Posture As A Strategic Act Of Conditioning Its Human., 2024, acrylic on linen.
Younguk Yi, The Delivery Man Has Collected Your Food Order., 2024, acrylic on linen.
Younguk Yi, The Dog, Believing It Was About To Go For A Walk, Felt Its Heart Pound Wildly As Its Owner Paused In Front Of The Bakery., 2025, acrylic on linen.
Maxwell Mustardo, Blue & Green Anthropophora, 2024, Stoneware, PVC rubber coating.
Maxwell Mustardo, Chameleon Anthropophora Pink-Blue-Green, 2024, Glazed stoneware, PVC rubber coating.
Maxwell Mustardo, Orange Anthropophora, 2024, Stoneware, PVC rubber coating.
Maxwell Mustardo, Blue & Pink Anthropophora, 2024, Stoneware, PVC rubber coating.
Theo A. Rosenblum, Infinite Dawg (Françusi), 2023, polychromed wood.
Theo A. Rosenblum, Getting Old Sucks, 2024, wood and lamp parts.
Hugo Ciappi, Six Types of Hugs, 2024, Airbrush and enamel on canvas.
Hugo Ciappi, How To Be A Painter, 2024, Airbrush and enamel on canvas.
Hugo Ciappi, Evolution of The Hat, 2024, Airbrush and enamel on canvas.
