In conjunction with Metropolis at Simon Lee New York, the gallery is pleased to present a screening of FOOD, a documentary surveying the artist run restaurant in New York in the 1970s followed by a panel featuring exhibited artists Rose Marcus and Eric N. Mack moderated by Andrew Blackley. 

In 1971, Gordon Matta-Clark, with Caroline Goodden, Suzanne Harris, Tina Girourd and other New York artists, opened the restaurant FOOD in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. At the time the area was underdeveloped however was populated by artists seeking cheaper rent for work and living. It was within this environment that FOOD served a practical function of bringing together artists, collectors, and art professionals for a meal. It was also conceived as a creative endeavor, as evidenced by a menu that at times included a bone-filled soup and live brine shrimp served in hard-boiled eggs. The project produced the film FOOD, constructed from footage taken in 1972 in collaboration with the photographer Robert Frank, which documents a full day at the restaurant, beginning at Fulton Street Fish Market in the morning and ending with after-dinner preparations for the next day.

Though FOOD certainly feeds a sense of nostalgia for an imagined golden age of New York City, it more crucially functions as a point of origin for a number of artistic endeavors that have come since. Susan Cianciolo’s RUN RESTAURANT (2001/2017) and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free) (1992-present) are but two literal examples of projects that take food and social relations as their media. Even FOOD itself has outlived its original run on Prince Street: White Columns (the institution founded, not incidentally, by Matta-Clark as 112 Greene Street) staged a revival in 1999, and yet another iteration was hosted by Frieze New York in 2013. 

Entering professional life post-recession, young artists have bypassed the relational models and critical frameworks of their professors to resurrect the earlier communal ethos of FOOD. If relational practices, in this context exemplified by Tiravanija’s free lunch at 303 Gallery, eschewed the business model of the original, artists operating as purveyors of artisanal goods bring it back, offering work attainable to their peers. This could include short lived apartment galleries (Bedstuy Love Affair or Rear Window) or artistic community kitchens (such as Zax that was ran by artist Will Stewart). Other artists may draw from their community by repurposing the materials that entrench the areas that artists occupy, such as Rose Marcus and Eric N. Mack.

Rose Marcus and Eric N. Mack, both based in New York, deal in images, fabric, and a permeating sense of estrangement, constructing nuanced assemblages from materials close at hand. Marcus photographs bodies in urban spaces and then abstracts them through formal intervention and cloth adornments, creating layers of detachment between us and her unaware subjects. At a distance, Mack’s works may resemble the garments that hang in the pop-up shops and sample sales lining Canal Street, but upon closer inspection prove too unruly to accommodate the average human body. “The works reflect an unstable relationship to form and presence akin to that of clothing,” Cat Kron writes in Artforum. “Hanging in a closet, a dress or shirt bespeaks the body’s absence while affirming that that body exists – somewhere.” In both cases, we struggle to situate ourselves in relation to things that, as city dwellers, often feel like home. Working in conventional forms, with a fine attunement to their surroundings, Mack and Marcus could provide insight into their relationship to New York City ¬– their chosen environment – and the artistic communities in which they associate.

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