Nightlife installs himself at the Art Fair

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Published: 4:00pm, 3 Jun 2010Updated: 1:12pm, 19 Oct 2016

I went to the Art Fair Vernissage on Wednesday. There was a whole lot of spellbinding stuff this year, plus an obscene amount of gallerist ego. Ugly. I saw people sporting sunglasses there the whole time. Perhaps the art was a bit too blinding for them. It’s always subjective when it comes to art.

Whilst chatting with a fabulous PR friend, this woman of East Asian descent, neither exhibitor nor staff, came over to drop it like it’s hot. Within less than half a minute, she slipped in “Are you here to buy art?” “Seen anything you want to buy?” and “Let me know what you’re going to buy.” So yes, the lady made it crystal clear that she’s there to BUY shit. She gave no pretense about appreciating the diverse variety of international artists, nor commented on the aesthetic merit of any piece. Just buy, buy, buy. I haven’t used the complete full sentence of BPSTFU for months, but bitch please, you deserve it. Shut the fuck up. You are nothing but a consumer. I bet you’ve never painted a picture after preschool. You might as well have just screamed: “HellooOo I am nouveau fuckin riche—what gets my rocks off is letting people know I can afford art.”

Lady, I hope you sincerely didn’t make a complete fool out of yourself at the after-party by the Grand Hyatt pool, where all the serious art collectors were. For serious art collectors would never utter pretentious, pompous and hollow drivel like that. You think I’m being elitist? Your rep will be utterly tarnished forever if you aspire to enter their world via that buy buy buy baloney. I was by the poolside, and I just shut the hell up and ate samosas.

Most of my friends get more of a kick out of being artistic—creating art instead purchasing art. Like the fantrashtic Liza of Hip Hong Kong. She came up with this garage glamorous idea for Art Fair week. Basically the syzygy with a bespoke space-age princessy dress pulled her into Melaine Living Arts a week ago. She then put on the dress and enlisted street artist XYZ of www.dimmsumm.com from Poland (who’s been trying to get out of street art lately) to paint on the pure white canvas in compromising situations all across town, whilst being videotaped. Like lying next to the famous trashtastic bag lady who lies at her corner of D’Aguilar and Queen’s. (I have always enjoyed that bag lady’s mad style on a purely aesthetic level—she’s always done the most creative sculptural headpieces with nothing but plastic bags. Hell, she could totally join the Haus of Gaga if she wanted to).

It was an exhausting eight hours of videotaping in meat markets and having old Filipino dishwashers paint sunflowers on Liza’s bosom. But lemme tell y’all, Liza was a trooper for art. She later modeled the painted dress with two hunks (courtesy of Tap That) who wore Hip Hong Kong T-shirts while following her around Wan Chai. At the Art Fair in the Convention Centre, not Lockhart. It was a hit, and they then shut down D-i at four in the morning. An art collector from Europe proposed to buy her dress, outside 7-11. She declined, but asked if he wanted to buy her for $100 instead. Just KIDDING. Tee tee eff en!