(Photos: Angelica Frey)
Between the Egg House on the Lower East Side and the Dream Machine in Greenpoint, there’s no shortage of Insta-friendly environments in the city right now. But that didn’t stop weekend warriors from lining up for House of Color: Monochrome, CJ Hendry’s ever-so-colorful installation in Greenpoint.
The 30-year-old Australian artist– who counts Kanye West and Christian Louboutin as fans—created a bizarro version of those Ikea-like model apartments, with each room containing furniture, carpeting, knick knacks and lighting in a uniform color. Each color scheme was based on crumpled Pantone swatches hanging on the walls, which were actually hyperrealistic drawings by Hendry herself. The living room ranged from baby blue to royal blue, while the yellow bedroom featured hues such as butter, canary and saffron.
(Photos: Angelica Frey)
Luckily there was no wait when I visited on Friday afternoon, a day after the four-day installation went up, but by Saturday the wait time reportedly averaged three hours. “When I got there, they were turning people away. It was only 2:30!!”, wrote one Instagrammer.
Hannah Frishberg, a Brooklyn-based writer, visited Saturday morning, soon after the 10am opening time. “By the time I left, the line was twisting around inside the warehouse and there were people on a line which wound outside the warehouse just to get into the elevator,” she told us.
Edwina Hay, a photographer, had planned to visit with some friends after brunch last Sunday. But they decided to pass on it after one of them caught sight of the line—the estimated wait time was four hours. “I like cool art stuff but I’d rather not spend hours in line,” Hay said.
Is it possible the wait would’ve been worth it? “I enjoyed the exhibit but the audience and wait time definitely turned it into an Insta trap, a la Refinery 29’s 29 Rooms,” Frishberg told us. “Virtually no one was treating the exhibit as art – it was seemingly seen universally as a photoshoot set.”
Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily: the obnoxious amateur photographers and overeager poseurs were showing genuine enthusiasm for a work of art, which isn’t all that common.
Here’s a look at some of the folks who toughed it out and made it inside: