Curators Jason Alexander, “That’s not actually part of the show, we just liked the way it looked.” All photos on site for Art Observed by Samuel Sveen.
The duo Jason Alexander—Jason Lee and Alexander Shulan—have set up a two-floor pop-up show in a former Chinatown sewing machine repair shop, Ten Ten, from which the show draws its name. The DIY exhibition of 17 young New York based artists includes Peter Demos, Debo Eilers, Ryan Foerster, and Ben Schumacher, as well a curator himself, Jason Lee—the self-inclusion an admitted faux pas. According to co-curator Shulan, the collection is unrestrained, loud, politically incorrect, non-AbEx (Abstract Expressionist), messy, with parts of it that “just don’t even work.” The diverse sculptures and images, a Porsche seat and chained pineapples, are set in dialogue amid wooden crates, broken sewing machines, and other remnants of the shop. The press release is a brief history of the sewing machine, providing something of a context of the space, while the curators otherwise chose to let the work speak for itself. Shulan said each of the young artists are either currently showing at galleries “or should be.” A few of the artists were also current or former assistants to more established artists; Jared Madere to Jenny Holzer, and Valerie Keane to Olaf Breuning and Ryan Sullivan.
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