Sometimes -- never often enough -- there is magic in new art. You will find a sweet, rude shot of it at at Leo Koenig in Chelsea, where the Vienna-based collective Gelitin is in residence. Over the past week, the group has turned the gallery into a sociable, raunchy, pixilated all-night version of Santa's workshop, pumping out free art on demand, and turning the image of a money-choked, object-clogged New York art world on its head.
Gelitin itself has remained all the while invisible. What you see while visiting Koenig is a sealed, space-hogging wooden box the size of a small house or a pre-1970s mainframe computer. It has two extensions, one like a cabinet, the other like a top-loading chest.
You are invited to place an object, any object, into the chest. Close the hatch. A yellow light goes on. You hear a sliding sound and a clunk. Your item has temporarily disappeared into the big box, just as dozens of others have, including wallets, photographs, specially made items (artists have brought their own work) and, memorably, a two-year-old child. (The daughter of another Koenig artist, Erik Parker, spent a few hours in the box, emerging delighted but respectfully mum about her experiences -- the Gelitin team had sworn her to secrecy.)
Take a seat. Eventually -- the wait can be from a few minutes to more than an hour -- a light on the other extension goes on. Open the door and you find your object joined by a brand-new, handmade "duplicate," or at least something that more or less resembles the original. Both elicit admiring responses from the people waiting their turn. And there always are people; the show has generated an avid community of shared interest.
When the oohs and aahs subside, you can take your new art home.
Like the art, the whole scene feels extremely laid-back, though for the elves inside the machine it may be a different story. There are six: the four members of the Gelitin collective -- Ali Janka, Florian Reither, Tobias Urban and Wolfgang Gantner -- along with the Miami-based artist Naomi Fisher and a psychiatrist named Gabriel, last name unknown, who is presumably there to keep the workforce on an even keel.
Therapy would come in handy. The six people have been locked in together for a week. Although the windowless box is equipped with beds, a toilet, cooking facilities and food, it has no telephone, television, radio or computer, or any other means of contacting the outside world. The box-dwellers have no way of telling the time of day, or the day of the week.
They slave away around the clock. They laid in a hefty supply of traditional art materials (paper, paint, pencils, modeling clay and so on) and some two dozen cartons of junk, from scrap metal and feathers to pornographic magazines and dolls. And there is their personal garbage, like product-packaging, used eating utensils, left-over food. Everything goes into the art they put out.
Gelitin, until recently spelled Gelatin, thrives on arduous conditions. Its members gained a certain notoriety in New York when, as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's studio program in 2000, they secretly removed a window from the 91st floor of the World Trade Center and briefly installed an exterior balcony. (When the Port Authority learned of the project and freaked out, the members of Gelitin denied they had done it. The answer is still unclear.)
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