While I was looking in the gargantuan tangle of 50 multicolored inflatables including the centerpiece of CJ Hendry Keff Joons The exhibition, a Tim name attendant gave me a warning. “Only a few seconds of silence,” he said.
A few moments later, as at the right time, two small children and an adult, all wearing socks, rushed into the fully white padded room. The children headed for the 20 -foot high -top of the air -filled air waste and began to climb an oversized pink tentacle resting on the ground. While their hands and their feet were in touch with its surface, the cover of silence was replaced by grinning vinyl noises. The adult asked Tim if he could take a photo before moving away to join the children, who had started to cross a labyrinth of blue and white projections.
More visitors rushed and, without hesitation, plunged into the cavities of the floating monolith. The piece swelled with joyful cries and multiple laughs, and soon the whole nest of balloons bounced and swung with a crowd of all ages.
An exaggerated version of the sculptures of Ballon dogs surfaces of Jeff Koons, Hendry Keff Joons The show transforms an apparently modest warehouse At 50 Gold Street in the Brooklyn Vinegar Hill district in a rainbow playground filled with air which seems to have been removed from the craziest dreams of a clown. The interactive show, open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to April 20, is free to the public with admission based on a basis at first arrival, first served – which led to long lines on average about an hour or more waiting times for a 15 -minute entrance.
Although it is anchored by the huge climbable installation sitting in the center, the exhibition also includes nine hyper-realistic ball drawings, at the price between $ 48,990 and $ 220,000 and already at closed counters, according to the artist's website; a three -foot resin sculpture at a price of $ 85,000 (also sold); and printed at a price of $ 790 (all sold). Aiming in the sense of an attraction of carnival, the exhibition also offers a range of memories to buy, including $ 245 silk scarves, $ 45 balloon packs, $ 15 magnets and $ 10 enamel pins.
Instagrammable quality of the installation Execute a thread through the past work of Hendry, which includes a series of pieces that corresponded to Frenched pantone color sample drawingsan Olympic pool In the middle of the desert of Las Vegas, and another installation of the inflatable labyrinth on which centered on Rorschach Skardsable works.
And like these previous efforts, Keff Joons is not just an exhibition, but an entire production which requires daily maintenance of an entire fleet of workers. (Hendry refused to disclose the budget of this program, and when I asked to speak to him, a team of public relations told me that she “did not do any more interviews” – an answer that struck me as contrary to the welcoming quality that his work suggests.)
Dylon Harbottle, director of the artist's studio, told me that the whole installation was cleaned every night, a process that generally takes five to six hours to finish and is done by deflating and rewarding each ball individually.
“We use the color as a guide,” said Harbottle. In addition to that, the balloons are regularly reinflamed every few days when they start to lose air.
When I asked if there had been injuries, Harbottle replied that there were “hits”, but no one was injured. “The children are very bouncent, just like the balloons,” he joked.
But it should be noted that children are not the only ones to appreciate the show. Rickina Brooks, 38, who visited her younger sister and three teenage girls earlier this week, told me that it was a fun activity that was worth 40 minutes online. At the start, she thought it would be “baby”, until she decided to try it.
“I left my inner child,” said Brooks, but admitted that it made him nervous to climb too high.
Another pair of participants, Jessica Ursino and her daughter Stella, said they were online for an hour. Stella said she preferred to stay low on the ground and climb through the tunnels.
“I did not think I would like to climb and crawl through it,” said Ursino, looking at his nephews, who still climbed the tas of ball, swinging from inflatable inflatable. “But I loved it.”
