Welcome to Wet Paint in the Wild, the freewheeling—and free!—spinoff of Artnet News Pro’s beloved Wet Paint gossip column, where we give art-world insiders a disposable camera to chronicle their lives on the circuit. To read the latest Wet Paint column, click here (members only).
Last week, writer Whitney Mallet released the Whitney Review of New Writing, a lit-crit newspaper that has tapped many of New York’s most compelling writers to try their hand at capturing the zeitgeist. Art world luminaries like Gladstone director Alissa Bennett and critic Jarrett Earnest are featured in the paper’s third issue, which has been devoured by the lucky few who have gotten their hands on a copy. I handed Mallett a disposable camera so that she could capture the scene around the new issue’s launch during a time when literary criticism in New York feels like a party as much as it does a scholarly conversation. Take a look for yourself…
—Annie Armstrong
Hot off the press! Isaiah Davis, artist and boyfriend, helps me unload the precious cargo coming from our printer in Queens.
Two thumbs up! Me wearing Telfar (one of our advertisers) and posing with the husband-and-wife delivery team that brought the boxes over in their van.
Boxes of The Whitney Review stacked in our apartment lobby. I had better luck this time around. In December, when I was receiving issue 002, the boxes arrived the same moment our landlord made a surprise visit.
Isaiah worked up a sweat helping me carry the boxes up to our third-floor walkup wearing wool pants.
Next task: I went over to the Gayletter / Supergay office in Dumbo to pick up some bottles of vodka for the party. “No pictures,” said Tom Jackson, not feeling photo-ready but I negotiated a shot with his hands at least.
I also hand modeled. Here’s some BTS from our e-commerce photo shoot. I’m posing beside a giant pile of leather off cuts in Isaiah’s studio.
I got a manicure to match issue 003. I love OPI because their color names are always puns, but this one is beyond corny: “NFTease Me.” It matches pretty well Pantone’s “Process Blue U.”
This was my first time at Isaiah’s studio. I got to see IRL a lot of pieces I’ve been hearing about for months, or had just seen iPhone pics of.
Isaiah sitting on a sculptural cage on caster wheels he welded this year called Sex Machine 3: steel, silicone, and enamel paint.
Here’s a work-in-progress quilting study also by Isaiah on his studio wall.
The next day, I took some boxes down to where we were doing the launch party in Soho. Lily Roche, the Whitney Review’s development manager, got some reading in as we schemed logistics.
Sara Apple Maliki and Pietro Alexander also cracked open an issue. They hosted the launch at 59 Wooster in Soho, where Alexander’s usually-L.A.-based gallery was doing a pop-up, with a group show Maliki curated. It’s on view until May 31.
I borrowed Look 1 from Luar’s Spring 2024 show for the party. It matched nicely with Kay Kasparhauser’s foam, plaster, and resin sculpture Bugs, which reminds me of a dollhouse.
Party time! When Whitney Review contributor (and Filmmaker Mag Ed-in-Chief) Scott Macaulay walked into 59 Wooster, he said, “This was the Kitchen in the ’80s!” He was their programming director back then.
Gia Kuan snagged a copy early on in the night, saying it’s the perfect thing for the new bookshelf at Gia Kuan Consulting’s new offices. Regretfully I did not get a pic of Gia and husband Anatoli’s curly-coated Lagotto Romagnolo named Truffle. But he was also there.
But I did snap furniture designer Rich Aybar’s giant Schnauzer named Salsa, pictured here with a can of Bitte craft soda, which I exclusively sipped all night (I prefer being sober at my own parties).
The always stylish Arjun Ram Srivatsa, author of one of the issue’s feature essays — a sharp but hilarious screed on the misuse of music — arrived at the party in all orange. (Autumn colors are in full force for spring.)
For this issue, Journey Streams reviewed Tiqqun’s contemporary classic Preliminary Materials for the Theory of a Young Girl “in the same unhinged, algorithmic voice as the book itself,” according to Anika Jade Levy (whose own review praised Brat).
Like any good media party, there were lots of photos. Pervasive iPhone documentation demonstrated here by curator Kyla Gordon.
Lots of photos of people taking photos (the snake eating its own tail). Pictured is photographer Acudus.
Pierce Jackson was one of the DJs. The lineup was rounded out by the ultracool Silvia Prada, Skype Williams, and Bloodcore AKA Gregory Miller, plus Waldo Báez who hopped on the decks impromptu at the end of the night.
People danced — like Vidoun’s Tasha Savaria in all denim.
They stunted — like MoMA curator Carson Chan posing with the issue peeking out of a large Ana bag by Luar.
And glowed — sweat being the season’s hottest accessory, modeled here with perfection by artist Chloe Wise.
Many noted that the party was full of hot boys. Here, the Whitney Review’s associate publisher Michael Bullock captured staring deeply into poet Kyle Dacuyan’s eyes.
New couple alert: Kapp Kapp’s Daniel Kapp and Vidoun’s Alex Galan were spotted looking smitten.
Everyone sexy and intellectual was in attendance including Dese Escobar, Frank Nesbitt, and Adrian Diaz, fresh off Luar’s Met Gala Lil Nas X success earlier in the week.
Did you notice the shank-button detailing on my Luar fit resembles Lil Nas X’s Met Gala suit?
Ruby McCollister arrived, wispy headband in tow, and congratulated me on throwing the “first party of summer!” (Who do you think she’s texting?)
And it was summer hot. Hot enough for personal fans and sweat rags.
The many editors and publishers in attendance included Bryce Thomas and Kevin Hunter of Justsmile Magazine. Kevin pictured wiping his brow.
Also Erik Maza of Town & Country.
And Taylore Scarabelli of Interview posing here with Skype Williams and Coco Gordon Moore. Taylore and Skype contributed to the new issue (and both with a heavy dose of sass, I might add, writing about Vetements’s fashion show notes and Naomi Campbell’s novel Swan, respectively).
Document Journal’s Drew Zeiba also contributed, reviewing a nearly 2,000-year-old picaresque novel by Petronius which reportedly includes fart jokes, dick jokes, and bisexual love hexagons.
Many escaped for cigarettes and colder air outside, spilling off the sidewalk and onto the cobblestone street.
Sheer proved a practical choice given the weather.
In between letting the hordes in and out, alluring door girl Stevie Fusco worked from her phone on a Jane Eyre essay. She’s an English Lit major (as was I in college).
Another fan of the Brontë sisters was upstairs: writer and model Amber Later. Later is also a great study of Japanese authors, and for issue three she wrote about Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night: its mix of “kindness and loneliness” like “mirrors tunneling light back and forth without ever touching.”
Paige K. Bradley also reviewed a Japanese author for issue three: the source text for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, a sort of coming-of-age ethics guide by Genzaburo Yoshino called How Do You Live?
Mara Mckevitt’s book Making Of is reviewed in issue three (by Maya Martinez), and, shameless plug, the Whitney Review is presenting the NYC premiere of the connected film Val on May 25 at Metrograph.
Artists Paul Kopkau and Raque Ford. Paul reviewed Body Language: The Queer Staged Photographs of George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa for the issue. He also fairy-godmother-ed me a crocodile clutch for the evening, previously owned by celebrated American painter Jacqueline Humphries.
The homies in shades of wine and burgundy: PIN–UP’s Felix Burrichter, fashion designer Gregory Miller AKA DJ Bloodcore, and editor Mekala Rajagopal, both of Interview and the Whitney Review. Isaiah theorized it’s the erratic and constantly transitional weather of climate change that has people dressing in autumn shades for “spring.”
Near the end of the night, artists Chukwumaa and E. Jane ate some of the cake I almost forgot to serve. I remembered at like 10:45 and the party was supposed to be over at 11.
Thank you Wegmans for making my custom sheet cake dreams come true at the very affordable price of $128 (including delivery). People loved it. Or at least taking pictures of it.
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