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April 11, 2008 2:10 pm
Something under a million little pieces of art went on view at Half Gallery last night, as the James Frey-Bill Powers-Andy Spade joint venture inaugurated its new Lower East Side space with a show by former Imitiation of Christ designer Matt Damhave. “You know how they’ll put old manuscripts between plexi, because the paper’s all rotting away? I kind of stole the idea from that,” Damhave explained when asked about the unusual mounting of his collagelike, cut-paper works, each of which had been stuck behind a pane of Plexiglas and then bolted straight to the wall. The few attendees who could fit into the 350-square-foot space seemed to spend as much time double-taking over the fact that there was nothing separating art from paint as they did unknotting Damhave’s dense images, but the artist himself was untroubled by the idea that his work wouldn’t remain entirely pristine over the month-long course of the show. “I like that the colored paper is all going to leach into the walls. When they take everything down, it’ll be like the work is still there, a little bit. It’s good to leave an impression.”
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