Good ol' P.S.1 has been showing works from NY area artists in its Greater New York 2005 show. However, one artist, Mike Bouchet, causing been making a stink. Literally: His work, "Celebrity Hot Tub for Kofi Annan," has been making visitors ill, according to the NY Post. (For your NY Post conspiracy theorists, Rupert hates modern art!) How does Bouchet achieve this powerful audience reaction? The sculpture has a "rotting sausage stewing in a [Jacuzzi] of noxious water." One staffer told the Post, "Sure, it's terrible, everyone complains, someone vomited. It got real bad, we didn't know you had to clean it out. The guards are really mad about this." And other artists in the exhibit aren't that happy either. The best part about this is that Bouchet went back to his new home in Germany when the exhibit opened, and didn't leave instructions on how to maintain the work; the water and sausage were replaced, but the smell was back soon. This is totally like Gothamist's third grade science project, the one we made up the morning it was due - "What will happen to ice when it's left out of the freezer?" Clearly, sausage in a Jacuzzi in a museum would rot. But while Gothamist would like ot claim this is the grossest thing in a public museum/area we can think of, it's not. In San Francisco, there was an exhibit of corpses, which started to leak...and then the Conservatory of Flowers has the world's stinkiest flower.
Gawker noted a strange fake press release for this PS1 exhibition.
