(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
The devil went down to East Broadway?
VECTOR Gallery, the self-declared “Official Art Gallery of Satan,” has been cast out of heaven — or at least, Clinton Street.
JJ Brine, self-professed Crown Prince of Darkness and exponent of the posthuman art movement, opened VECTOR at 40 Clinton in July of last year. The tiny storefront was filled with creepy dolls, a shrine to a certain murderous cult leader, and an animal-masked mannequin holding up a sign declaring “Charles Manson Is Christ.”
Brine was occupying the space on a month-by-month basis — “and then suddenly I was told the place was being leased,” he recalls. What the hell?
The gallery, which claims to be both The Antichrist and “the most interesting phenomenon in New York,” quietly left Clinton Street at the end of May, only to hotfoot it to a new location, at 154 East Broadway (a gap of only 11 days, which some might term supernaturally speedy).
“I’m really excited about the new space. It’s on the cusp of Chinatown but still on the Lower East Side,” says Brine, who is also acting head of government. (VECTOR unilaterally seceded from the U.S. in November of last year: “I have an administration with a cabinet of ministers,” Brine explained. “And everyone has different psychic responsibilities.”)
As for the gallery itself, “It’s about all things. The intelligence that animates all life,” says Brine. At the basis of his project is a particular conception of unity: the idea that “the devil is the Lord and the Lord is the devil; we all have the sublime and the diabolical within us.”
It’s not surprising the gallery’s monthly religious ceremonies–which Brine says draw a crowd of 60 or so–will now be conducted near Seward Park. The neighborhood is so hot right now.