by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
LOWER EAST SIDE, Oct 24 – In a laundromat a few doors down from an NYPD precinct there is an art show that you might miss even as you look at it.
On the beige walls of the JJ Cleaners & Laundromat there are a dozen or so canvases, the same beige color at the walls.
If you look at them closely, shapes emerge. A car and a truck; a stream of traffic. A bus, or a bench: it's hard to tell, and harder still to get closer to see, as this painting is over a washer-drier. The smaller painters have lines, like the flags of Scandinavian countries.
There is a visitors' sign-in book, with three signatures. The show, "SERVICE" by Gloria Maximo, sponsored by Desnivel, has been here for five days. So you add a one-line review - "These works fit in so well here! - and this one, scarcely longer.
Out on First Avenue the gentrification and commodification continue, with two separate film shoots each with their own Haddad food / craft trucks.
On St. Mark's Place there is a Japanese mini-mart and maybe, somewhere in here, the drug rehab that's often cited to keep people on probation from being remanded.
Years ago, the author displayed work in something called the Food Stamp Gallery. Now reviewing this show in a laundromat. Some things never change.
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