Tour a Secret Art Show Inside a Condemned NYC Apartment Building

[PeaceNikki]

Last week, as New York City suffered through blistering cold temperatures, 43 street artists were secretly painting three entire floors of a soon-to-be-demolished apartment building. We got to visit during an exclusive, two-hour show on Friday night.

The show, called Surplus Candy, was the brainchild of street artist Hanksy. I spoke with Hanksy's manager about how the show came to be. After a friend suggested throwing a party in an abandoned building, Hanksy saw the space and thought it would be a great opportunity to host a brief, and completely illegal, art show.

Over a period of six days, a multitude of artists from all over New York came in and out of the structure, covering each wall, staircase, toilet, and sink with their own brand of art. While walking through the building, it's amazing to see how detailed some of the works are—especially considering the brief amount of time the artists had to do them.

After the viewing, the building will be permanently closed, until it's either gutted or completely demolished—but using an abandoned building as a blank canvas is a great way to utilize space in a city where street-artists are finding they have less and less room to play.

http://gizmodo.com/tour-a-secret-two-hour-art-show-inside-a-condemned-nyc-1499384094

A few of the many images at the link above

[Warpy]

1. A sane society would have recognized the character

built into those flats and would have renovated the building and sold the places for top dollar. As it is, they'll be demolished to make room for some characterless high rise they can cram full of characterless yuppies.

Having the money chasers destroy some priceless art work (plus a lot of very juvenile graffiti) just adds to the spirit of vandalism that started before the artists got in.

And yes, I could visualize quite a lot of this stuff on walls in Central Park East.