The uppercrust on display in “Wave Pattern”

Contributed by Jacob Patrick Brooks / The lofts of downtown New York occupy a special place in American art history. They functioned most importantly as incubators for Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, eventually giving way to the galleries of the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the spaces once occupied by Barbara Gladstone, Pat Hearn, and Willem de Kooning have been replaced with Uniqlo, Nike, and expansive apartments for the super wealthy. In “Wave Pattern,” a downtown apartment show on the sixth floor of an unassuming Broadway building, art world scions Dylan Brant and Max Werner provide some relief from this cluttered, big-box nightmare.

What sets the show apart from other DIY efforts is the glimpse it provides into the imaginations of collectors. We see the results of the twentieth century’s worst behavior in the living space of the rich, rather than work heavily influenced by that behavior in the living room of a Bushwick hipster. You walk in and are greeted by a large Schnabel in an ornate gold frame. To its immediate left are two more prints of his. On your right, there’s a David Salle painting, on the wall to your left a Keith Haring drawing. Turn the corner and you’re greeted by a Cady Noland. It’s truly a star-studded show, so I don’t care that the Kippenberger next to the Schnabel (effectively containing him at the entrance) is under a beam with no direct light. I also don’t care that when I turn the corner the guestbook is brighter than the Charline von Heyl to its right. Seeing the work seems less important than knowing that the person who made it is important. Why else would it be in a room this nice?

Featured image: Moira Dryer, Untitled, 1991

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