But somehow in this grand house of death, the works were alive, rich with layers of meaning, dense with Topchy’s amiable little jokes. Presented in a museum or a gallery, these things would have fallen flat. And did I mention the performer dressed as a mermaid cheerfully waving at visitors in front of the funeral home’s massive aquarium? He had placed his paintings and sculptures (the latter of which were painted Yves Klein blue) throughout the building, as well as fake plastic food, which like the funeral home’s tissue boxes, were discreetly placed on surfaces everywhere. And in that context, Topchy’s own art tchotchkes (found or otherwise) came to life. Topchy used the setting and the people in it not as an ironical backdrop for art tchotchkes, like so many shows we’ve seen in non-art settings - gas stations, convenience stores, mansions for sale, hotels - but as an integral part of the work itself. Topchy in a 2010 performance as the Brown Klown As we visitors arrived, these mortuary people in their somber clothes and somber voices invited us to explore the whole building, and would we care for a glass of wine? I wonder: did these people know who they were dealing with? Did they know that Topchy has an alter ego The Brown Klown, who traffics in absurdity and pathos and shit, or that he used to perform in a costume covered with spurting penises? If they had seen that, would they have let him in their cut-glass door? Topchy somehow got the funeral home to pull out all the stops, just as they would for a real death. It was truly immersive, in the way most selfie-driven installations can only dream of being. Topchy’s choice of setting itself was a gigantic found sculpture, and that night, we were all in the sculpture. Taken in the largest context (since context is everything), the funeral home - the building, the people within it - were selected by the artist, “placed” as they are in the midst of bustling life. H Lewis Funeral Directors in Houston, and which extended out into the parking lot and even the street, with the traffic cop and doorman acting as unwitting performers in Topchy’s Gesamtkunstwerk. We want to bridge that impassable divide, and we’ll try anything to do so.Įternal Now was a one-night exhibition - or more accurately, an Everything: performance and social sculpture and immersive installation, with painting and sculpture and found art - all of which seeped into every crevice of the Geo. But I think the artist Nestor Topchy’s recent exhibition Eternal Now was designed to draw attention to that very bizarreness, while also gently reminding us that the fancy funeral of the 21st century is no weirder than anything else human beings have done when people die. Observed dryly in the context of an art exhibition, without the bleaching effect of grief to strip away one’s capacity for critical observation, this all seems pretty bizarre. Your family and friends make their way into a gym-sized chapel, where they settle in front of a non-denominational altar flanked by two large video screens.
Servers materialize offering drinks and canapes. Boxes of tissue are conveniently placed throughout in tasteful wood dispensers. Your family and friends wander amid rooms of mahogany, chandeliers, rugs and oil paintings. A uniformed policeman directs traffic outside in the street, a courteous doorman is wearing white gloves and a hat, and staffers in somber business attire greet everyone with their respectful voices.
You, or rather the cold, meaty vessel of you that is left behind, is taken to a well-appointed place, where your family and friends convene for your final send-off. If you’re a rich person who dies in Houston, it often goes something like this: “Art is everywhere, except among the Art dealers in the Art temples, the way God is everywhere, save in churches.”
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