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Artist’s
Fog Transforms Forsaken Alley
by Barbara Aria
If Leonardo da Vinci were to walk down Cortlandt Alley today, what he’d
see might tempt him to add a few pages in his famous Notebooks. He’d
call the entry, “about the effects of machine-made fog on the perception
of urban grit” and write how a gust of wind causes the fog to fill
the alley on a cloudy day; or that a bridge over the alley vanishes from
view; or how figures become silhouettes when a beam of light hits the swirling
fog. And for sure, he’d notice that bands of rainbow appear against
the pitted tarmac when the fog hangs low to the ground on a still, sunlit
day.
These visual effects have been engineered by Mathew Geller as part of “Foggy
Day,” his installation on Cortlandt Alley, between Walker and White streets—a spot that must appear much as it did 100 years ago. Looking
out over the alley from his studio window, Geller has for years watched
steam spill sporadically from its garment-factory pipes and, like fog, transform
his otherwise dark and forsaken block into an evocative feast.
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In 1999, following an installation he did on an alley in Rotterdam,
Holland that served as the entrance for an art exhibit (he poured
paint from a fourth-floor window), Geller came up with an idea:
Turn Cortlandt Alley into a temporary environment by pumping it
full of fog. As climatic conditions changed, he conjectured, the
fog would rise or fall, billow or hang. The narrow alley itself,
with its foreboding industrial facades and deep shadows, would be
part of the artwork—a place, said Geller, “between reality
and myth.”
After four years of dealing with the red tape of city permit offices,
the artist has finally brought his idea to life. When the Trib met
Geller, a shaft of sunlight was piercing the shadows and the fog
swirled low to the ground. The scene seemed set for a movie shoot.
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“There’s the real
alley, which is sort of alluring but dangerous,” explained Geller,
who has lived on nearby White Street for 25 years. “People walk
by and are drawn to it, but want to stay away. On the other hand,
this is the archetypical back alley for Hollywood. Everybody in America
has seen this alley—it’s been on Law and Order lots of times,
and in music videos and fashion shoots. So in a way, I’ve just
taken a little of the romance from Hollywood, added it to the real
alley and tipped that scary-allure scale just a little bit toward
the allure.”
Geller created the machine fog with a system used for outdoor-restaurant
air-conditioning throughout the Southwest: Water under high pressure
from a compressor is broken up into water droplets, which escape from
pipes mounted, in this case, about 18 feet above the street. He added
planters filled with tall bamboo, echoing the “lucky bamboo”
that’s sold nearby all over Chinatown. And along the sidewalk,
he created “puddles” of translucent, colored rubber.
“They’re all things that exist on the alley,” said
Geller. “From my studio I can see a wild plant that’s sprouted
on one of these ledges. There are always spills in this alley. I just
exaggerated everything.” One day recently, said the artist, he
noticed somebody dancing on one of the rubber puddles.
“It’s one of the things I like about the whole idea of fog.
You know the scene at the end of Casablanca?” he asked, referring
to the famous, fog-shrouded runway scene with Bogart and Bergman.
“There, the fog is this romantic thing. But for a sailor, fog
is a bad thing. Or if you go to a mountain lake, you get up in the
morning, and see the fog. So the same condition can elicit a sense
of romance or danger or beauty, depending on the context.”
The fog in Casablanca was, like Geller’s, machine-generated.
It was intended to disguise the fact that the scene was being shot
on a Hollywood soundstage with a plywood and balsa airplane. Geller’s
alley is real New York. But when you walk through “Foggy Day,”
you could be Bogie. Just wear a trench coat.
“Foggy Day” runs through Nov. 14, Tue-Fri 12-2pm, 4-6:30pm;
Sat and Sun noon-6:30pm.
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