Billy Name
vintage factory Photos
Gavin Brown's Enterprise
558 Broome Street, NYC
October 14 - november 11, 1995
A conversation between Rainer Ganahl and The Thing
(THING) Ok, Rainer tell us something about this Gavin Brown Show.
(RAINER GANAHL) Gavin Brown is showing photographs and a sculpture by Billy Name. there are about 50 small scale b/w photographs, in black wooden frames. they all hang very close to each other. most of them are new prints, but some are original ones. the photos were taken from Andy Warhol's factory plus some street pictures with people from the scene... in the second room
(THING) Yeh, keep going...
(RAINER GANAHL) he also shows a few color photographs. there you also find a weird sculpture looking like Charles Ray's 'fucking couple'...consisting of a sculpture of two naked men who are joined together in the middle, without a head, without a torso... in plastic, like show room dummies, but were they join they have 3 erected
(THING) erected ...?
(RAINER GANAHL) with 3 erect penises.... 3 of them, but only 2 guys linked... they are leaning towards each other and build a bridge: 4 legs, 3 penises in the middle, ...I had difficulty imagining that this sculpture was also by the same artist, Billy Name , but only he was listed on the invitation card.
(THING) More sex to titillate the NEA budget cutters?
(RAINER GANAHL) the artist was present with a bunch of his old factory friends: elderly, wild looking people, - women, with big and well pronounced breasts, lipstick painted on them - making out with each other in the gallery, next to a table with lots of food... these elderly people, even as hippies, looked like grand pa's next to the younger, notorious soho scene...the puppets can be associated with sex, but it wasn't really sexy at all; it was more like a post-siamese twin
(THING) post-siamese twin syndrome?
(RAINER GANAHL) post-siamese twin syndrome... yes..
(THING) What kind of photos does he show?
(RAINER GANAHL) the photos were the ones, you can see in many books about Andy Warhol and his kids....I had dinner afterwards with Patrick Fox and he told me wild stories about Billy Names drug taking excesses. He knew them all well.
(THING) Boy, that was a wild gallery... on Bleeker Street. What a drug den that was! Gisela worked there for a while back then...
(RAINER GANAHL) well, Patrick had 2 excessive ex-drug eater friends with him and was wearing a black necklace, like one for dogs, and looked like a chic punk that is into sexual experimentation ...the photographs looked good and nostalgic for their days. In an interesting way there was barely any difference from their days to ours - the type of people here in NY hasn't really changed. maybe the activities have... and the danger with aids.
(THING) So was there a party afterwards?
(RAINER GANAHL) Yes there was one in a hotel, but I didn't go because it rained so much. It was also a kind of disturbing to see how quick these present protagonists of the pictures looked old today. But in the gallery we had the new hot scene. a lot of young people, also a lot of Germans.... Germans go now also on the "wild side". Wolfgang Tillmans and his boy friends were there... These Germans, except Wolfgang, - since he doesn't stress the scene look - look so funny and so "authentic"...
(THING) authentic?
(RAINER GANAHL) so funny, how an entire new scene is building up now, it is not anymore around "smart ideas", like in recent years, but supposedly about music, sex, life style....
(THING) Sponsored by "Lifestyle" condoms... .
(RAINER GANAHL) I guess, these young people in the gallery don't really do it...this has definitely changed...I suppose. the young ones just play the same fucking 'gallery posing' game about which people from the factory didn't care at all.
(THING) Mr. Ganahl we'd like to thank you for this chat. Call back soon!
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