Sam Falb reports on the 48-hour haircutting marathon at Lubov Gallery, NYC.
If you were to walk up the three flights of stairs to Lubov Gallery last weekend, you would have found all sorts of art world characters sat in black smocks across from Sof’ya Shpurova’s solo show “I’m a surgeon, maybe just of some other kind.” The purpose? All awaited haircuts by a scheduled roster of artists, gallerists, writers, and other friends of the gallery with – to put it diplomatically – varied levels of training (none).
“Honestly, I wanted to get all my friends to go on a bender with me,” gallery owner Francisco Correa Cordero shared. The idea arose from a shared joke about Cordero’s need for a haircut, with the gallerist and fellow conceivers Maria Puglisi Juvanet and Timmy Simmonds building out a multi-day hairstyling marathon of friends and industry peers. In the backdrop, DJs played, screenings were viewed, and pop-ups by Club Chess and GYARU GIRL were promised.
This writer sat for one of the first cuts of the day, entrusting artist Chloe Wise with crafting layers of curtain bangs on a blond wig. Gallery friends across culture, art, fashion, and nightlife including DeSe Escobar, Poppy Pulitzer, Meg Yates, Tony Matelli, Eli Ping, Martine Ali, Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen, and Vita Haas represent just a grab-bag of the roster of guests who arrived to shear or be shorn.
Cordero’s outreach to his community, which included ambitious targets such as Helmut Lang and Anderson Cooper, sparked an enthusiastic wave of support. The responses ranged from bicoastal gallerist Matthew Brown‘s playful “Hahah, that sounds amazing. I would totally fuck someone’s hair up,” to New York club maestro Jen Sillen‘s emphatic “I love this idea so much.” Broadway Gallery‘s Pascale Spengemann also chimed in, declaring, “Yeah, I’m down to mess someone’s hair up,” and subsequently receiving a cut from Magenta Plains‘ Olivia Smith.
Read on for Elephant’s photo portfolio of the weekend’s hijinks, a hair-raising exploration into radical creativity on the heads of New York’s art scene and beyond, where the boundaries of performance and social gathering were delightfully blurred.
Written by Sam Falb
