“What do one of Crescent City’s premier real-estate developers, a Voodoo priestess, the combative owner of one of the city’s most adventuresome art galleries, the New Orleans Police Department, and a pair of French artists who produce the tackiest photos you’ve ever seen have in common?” asks New Orleans’ Times Picayune art critic Doug MacCash as the intro-line to his “Strange Artfellows” review of the St. Claude Collective. In New Orleans, the city of unusual juxtapositions, the answer is an unusually whimsical, shared derelict space.

“The St. Claude Collective represents the work of some of the best artists in New Orleans, … drawn from all the major galleries in the city,” states curator Andy Antippas. “It is too much to say this is a curated exhibition; I merely took it upon myself to contact the artists and offer them an arbitrarily designated space to work with in the former Universal Furniture Building.”

The result – artists’ work in the quasi-gutted former store, looted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and shared by the artists and the New Orleans 5th district police — is an eclectic delight. As the visitor walks in the front door of the building, he/she enters a long, wide corridor down the center of which is a row of Jose Maria Cundin’s Obelisks: five in all. There are four large obelisks, The Discreet Obelisk, The Pluperfect Obelisk, The Mobile Obelisk for the National Movement, and The Georgian Obelisk. Each is painted in different, cheerful color; the fifth, The Unstable Obelisk, is pedestal mounted on rockers and painted a bright orange. This is the last obelisk the visitor encounters before reaching the police desk. The walls on either side of the corridor leading to the desk are covered with art: wall-hung sculpture, painting, and photography. The photographs, particularly, seem unusual for a police station. On the right wall, works by Mark J. Sindler feature a somewhat surreal image of a baker pulling a pan of French loaves from the oven (Fresh Bread, Binder’s Bakery — New Orleans) and an image of two double-chinned gentlemen wearing false eyelashes and platinum, big-hair wigs assisting one another in Preparing for Krewe of Armeinius Ball, Mardi Gras, 2007. Dennis Couvillion, on the left wall, places Two Marilyns – an image of two more fellows, one black and one white, in Marilyn Monroe drag – next to Police Horse, an image of one of the huge horses the police use to patrol the French Quarter.

Having navigated the art to reach the desk, the visitor is faced with two taped-up Xerox images, one on white and one on pale blue paper, stating: ONLY!!!!!! NOPD Officers and Military Officers allowed beyond this point!!!!! No Exceptions!!!!!! The duty officer tacitly ignores both the art and the art viewers.

The gallery opening to the left of the central corridor is dominated by Daphne Loney’s red neon Madonna with dangling rabbit and, at the far end of a space full of artistic surprises, a large (almost life-size!) paper mache elephant holding a red blossom in his trunk which also supports a hand-lettered paper sign reading “I’m not a sculpture but I play one on television.” Perhaps he is a renegade from Mardi Gras.

The gallery to the right of the main corridor also boasts a dizzying array of contemporary art. Centered in the space is an enormous stuffed white rabbit with long, floppy, pink-lined ears, ridden by twin, life-size figures wearing white shirts, red capes, white tennis shoes and denim overalls. Each of the abysmally solemn twins in Alex Podesta’s Hero holds red-yarn reins. Equally solemn, Christopher Saucedo’s Family Portrait, in exact weight and Volume only (with photograph) 2007, is a completely dead-pan, C-print portrait of Christopher, his wife and his two children, fronted by nickel-plated steel and bronze weights matching each family member’s personal specs.

Adjoining the rear of this gallery is another, smaller gallery housing delicate watercolors by Carol Leake. In these works Leake conflates the immorality of nudity with the true immorality and violence of guns – which proves to be a perfect segue to the quasi-porn of Prospect.1 artists Pierre et Gilles. Leaving Leake’s literal guns, one is reminded of the military “this is my rifle and this is my gun…” as too-perfect images of too-perfect people evoke unbelieving guffaws at the over-the-top sentimentality of stagey, soft porn glitz framed in tinsel boas. Images of seaweed streaming mermen and bloody fingered Vampiras (in perfect air-brushed Technicolor) compete for attention with tattooed sailors whose too-blue eyes are brimming with entreating tears. One poor fellow sprawls in the dirt surrounded by eggs as his “gun” has morphed into a duck’s head. Interestingly, to enter this space, one must pass a private security guard, on duty less than ten feet from the 5th District Police desk.

The totality of the St. Claude Collective project is a gently humorous amalgam that reflects its host city. St. Claude Avenue itself, the link between the upscale Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods, and the less economically healthy lakeside neighborhoods, marks an economic juxtaposition. The former Universal Furniture Store building, with its dated renovations in terrible disrepair and its bare concrete floors, is a ludicrous site for international art-star product – but the product itself is a ludicrous parody of popular culture (Pierre et Giles). While the work of the fifty-plus local artists invited to participate in the show ranges from the very serious to the humorous or even banal, the Prospect.1 show-stopper is the banal raised to the level of high art. The merging of this art with the space occupied by the New Orleans 5th District Police station is so tantalizingly absurd that it seems almost a dream of the Mad Hatter – attended by an elephant who must declare himself non-art. The over-arching impression of this show is one of silly delight – some of which must be taken seriously — as we all second line behind the quixotic pied piper Andy Antippas, the droll genius behind the show. As a reflection of all the best elements of New Orleans, the show is perfect – images of drunken drag queens displayed beside police horses; the banal as high art; high art in a derelict furniture store; bunnies and guns and nudes and Madonnas; real policemen and private security; an elephant masquerading as non-art – all brought together in one seamless whole to be shared equally and freely by all. New Orleans – an artist herself, with a well developed sense of self irony.

Thomasine Baker

About the Reviews

Catalog of Artists