Katsu blings out Eyebeam, nailing Paula Cooper Gallery in the process

Katsu blings out Eyebeam, nailing Paula Cooper Gallery in the process. (all photos courtesy anonymous tipster)

F.A.T. Gold, the retrospective celebrating art/hacker/open-source activist collective Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, has been open for about 20 minutes at Eyebeam, and they’re already pissing people off. The snafu occurred this afternoon, when graffiti artist Katsu started spraying gold paint all over the facade of Eyebeam with this trademark fire extinguisher. Naturally, he only had so much control over where the paint went in the wind tunnel of Chelsea, which meant that gold kinda sorta went everywhere.

Next thing you know, someone from Paula Cooper Gallery — which is located at 534 West 21st Street; Eyebeam is at 540 — came out to see what the hell was going on. A discussion ensued, as you can see in the video below:

Hyperallergic also heard firsthand from an eyewitness who prefers to remain anonymous:

I saw this guy in a mask pull out a fire extinguisher and suddenly the building was covered in paint. A bunch of paint got on the neighboring gallery, Paula Cooper, and someone from their building came out immediately, like, ‘What the fuck?’ This is only the first day of F.A.T. GOLD at Eyebeam, what’re they going to do the rest of the week?

A good question, indeed. Turf war?! No but seriously, lighten up Paula Cooper!! Chelsea may have lots of money, but it could definitely use a little more bling.

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Jillian Steinhauer is a former senior editor of Hyperallergic. She writes largely about the intersection of art and politics but has also been known to write at length about cats. She won the 2014 Best...

15 replies on “FAT Lab’s KATSU Graffities Paula Cooper Gallery (Inadvertently)”

  1. yes you have to repaint the WHOLE building because nobody can match that bleck grey paint to cover the awesome gold…… give me a break and lighten up…. maybe even paint the other building with gold the rest of the way instead

  6. can’t be spraying your gold flim flam all willy nilly and expect no one to at least ask “what the fuck?” I was asking wtf when watching it.

  7. Pointless news… bet Eyebeam will pay to re-paint Cooper’s gallery…Next time Katsu should use tape mask or use something else than a f… fire extinguisher that is normally used by Kidult !

  10. Whatever Paula Cooper. You’ll never appreciate street art stop having a cow. Plus it looks 100x better than the boring gray.

  12. A non-story about a non-event. Just the kind of thing to make “outsider” art even more boring. Slow day at “Hyper?”

  13. notice eyebeam protected their ~own~ glass with plastic sheeting.

    looks like eyebeam or the artist owe$ paula for repainting.
    or at least should let paula hire someone to mess up the eyebeam facade some time later.

    (i’m available.)

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