A pop-up exhibition of site-specific works in a 19th-century tenement in the Lower East Side of New York, once home to a bustling fish market .
Inspired by the cover story “The Apotheosis of the Crummy Space” by Nancy Foote in the Artforum (October 1976). Foote appreciated how the site “can be ‘amended’ subtly by small additions that comment on its nature and adapt their posture to its own; it can serve as a medium, directly or indirectly, also as subject,” and noted a “disaster area ambience.”
The site I chose was a building once home to a Chinese family-operated seafood market but the fishmongers had long vacated. The building was in a terrible state, soon to be demolished for new residential condominiums. What better way to memorialize the space then to turn it into an artwork? In reaction to its spatial configurations, I commissioned artists to transform the two floors into a gritty, visceral experience with their respective site-responsive installations.
“Curator Tan is to be congratulated on his boldness in salvaging a disheveled space, soon intended to house luxurious apartments, for a two-person show that was successful in all ways, making highly imaginative use of what was available to the artists.”
