The Portable Hairy Who! (1966), The Hairy Who Sideshow(1967), Hairy Who (1968), and Hairy Who (cat-a-log) (1969)
One of the biggest galleries in Chelsea is playing host to a survey of alternative art groups from the 1960s to the early 2000s. This is a story of American art minus New York and Los Angeles: body socks knit in neon psychedelic patterns by Providence’s Forcefield; chunky ceramic sculptures from the Bay Area’s Funk Artists; freaky comics published by Chicago’s Hairy Who; and documentation of performances by Ann Arbor’s Destroy All Monsters. A version of this show appeared earlier this year at Providence’s Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Curator Dan Nadel’s scholarly approach to mapping under-appreciated artistic subcultures has, for the most part, been stripped away for this gallery presentation, which amounts to an elegant display of unruly aesthetic objects.
Pictured: The Portable Hairy Who!, 1966; The Hairy Who Sideshow, 1967; Hairy Who, 1968; and Hairy Who (cat-a-log), 1969.