Pacemaker – January 2005

DÉJÀ VU. The Seventh Annual Look-Alike Convention, a performance-based project by Matthieu Laurette presented at Dia Art Foundation in New York on November 12, 2004, as part of Dia’s fall gala.

Wearing outmoded yet elegant all-black ensembles, we entered the art-lit cocktail party at Dia:Chelsea. The event preceded the gala dinner celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Dia Art Foundation. For sure, the first reception ever to have so many celebrities and prominent Hollywood figures as guests. Let alone share thoughts over champagne and tasty aperitifs with the distinctive group of art patrons, prominent artists, notorious globetrotters or the one or two well-positioned arts professionals of the field. The evening couldn’t go bad after stumbling upon Rod Stewart or air kissing Gloria Estefan, and least after embracing Sean Connery or De Niro amid a Flavin’s radiance and a camera’s flash.

But undeniably, this type of guests did seem overly gaudy and common for the generally exclusive and minimal-bent Dia crowd. Was it the celebrities’ fashion that clashed with the aesthetic of the white cube or the indiscrete paparazzi flashes that interrupted critical discussions on contemporary art? Was it that no one was a spectator at the gallery that evening? That everyone in attendance was performing? Or, was it simply that the scene was too ordinary for New Yorkers? That evening, the Seventh Annual Look-Alike Convention presented a challenge, at least to those present. It was not to impulsively refute or acknowledge celebrities or celebrity culture. Instead, the challenge was to understand what celebrity culture could mean in that context, where private ventures, epitomized perhaps by a cluster of patrons and collectors in the room, are more influential to the making and writing of art history.

–Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy