Artist Shows Naked Ambition With Glow-in-the-Dark Painting Party

Things can get messy at the quasi-weekly happenings artist Michael Alan hosts at his Bushwick studio. During one of them, so much cake was smeared all over the place that you’d think Tina Fey stole the idea of sheet-caking from him. And who could forget his Nude Thrift Shop, which promised “a kiddie-pool naked dance party.”

This weekend, The Living Installation— the name Alan has given this 17-year-old series of intimate, informal happenings – will take the form a Glow in the Dark Paint Party. Alan previously collaborated with Kenny Scharf on some shenanigans at the famed artist’s Cosmic Cavern. Now that Kenny’s cavern is kaput, Alan is bringing some blacklights and some neon, fluorescent, and day-glo paints into his own studio, aka the Imaginarium, for a sort of tribute to his friend, Scharf, that will be “extremely trippy without the drugs or any of that—it’s a natural high.”

Saturday’s event will involve some body painting and clothed performers like Alan’s girlfriend, Jadda Cat. With Alan’s drawings on display, the result sounds like a decent substitute for those still suffering from eclipse totality FOMO. “If you just like to sit and watch the visuals in an all-black room, it’s just like watching a 3-D movie,” Alan told us.

The idea, Alan said, is to harken back to the old New York City, where he was born, right on Halsey Street, in 1977. “I think Bushwick is the #1 art center, that’s my opinion– but I think a lot of the old New York is gone.”

Can Alan bring it back by painting bodies while some choice vinyl spins? (In addition to being a visual artist with upcoming shows at Avant Garde and AFA Gallery, he’s also a musician who has collaborated with the likes of Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Shinji Masuko of the Boredoms). To get the party’s address and find out, you’ll have to make a $20 donation—that glow-in-the-dark paint ain’t cheap.