Exhibitions

“It Takes 11 Years Practice to be at the Same Pool,” or “Pool Date” is a dating experience and installation in Special Special’s summer group show, SPF. For each Pool Date, two participants who sign up for the same time slot meet at a pool installation with allusions to secluded suburban backyards, high-rise rooftops, and urban public pools. Kick off your date by choosing one of seven classic mock-tail drinks, served in a hand-made larger-than-life ceramic cocktail vessel from the Special Special bar. Each date lasts one hour.

Inspired by the Chinese proverb “十年修得同船渡” which translates to “It takes ten years practice to be on the same boat,” the Boat Date becomes a Pool Date when “It Takes 11 Years Practice to be at the Same Pool” (十一年修得同池渡). This project is built on the concept of yuánfèn where one’s good deeds from past lives will lead to the “fateful coincidence” of those you meet in this life, whether as friends, lovers, or acquaintances.

Everyone has different associations with the pool. For some it is where best summer memories of their backyard pools are formed, for others it is reminiscent of an era where pools were inaccessible to some. In New York City, pool culture implies the exclusivity of private pools or the crowded waters of public swimming pools. Pool date is an imagined space that brings two people together to have meandering conversations around memories of swimming pools, summer romances, and childhood dreams. Along with Special Special, Pool Date intends to create openness, patience and appreciation of the moments when two people encounter each other at our imagined city pool.

Pool Date is a project by Wildman Clab in collaboration with Special Special. Since 2017, Wildman Clab, created by Lu Zhang, is a lab/club to research and prove the existence of primitive individuals. By providing activities and experiences within specific environments, WC explores the unknown and unexplainable part of human relationships. Wildman Clab has previously created social encounters through mobile karaoke at Columbus Park, Chinatown, NY; and in Boat Date at NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY.

“It Takes 11 Years Practice to be at the Same Pool” is part of SPF, our first group show transforming the living room storefront into a swimming pool. SPF is a metaphor of the Special Special logo, a blue oval that is the pool of water to be submerged for creative dialogues. A fluid arrangement of various artist projects evoking the spirit of a poolside retreat, offering New Yorkers a refuge from the sweltering heat. Interspersed throughout the months of May through August, each highlighted project, workshop, and event opened with a “Pool Party.”

Participating artists in SPF includes Lu Zhang, Aria McManus, Ben Langford, and an “Overflow” curation by John Belknap.

Special Special presents BOLTS by Oona Brangam-Snell, a set of blankets featuring contemporary interpretations of classical painting motifs. BOLTS (a unit of measurement for fabric) consists of five original blankets by Brangam-Snell designed over the course of the past year. In addition, a sixth blanket designed in collaboration with Special Special in limited edition, depicts a night sky with creatures surrounding an oval oculus, looking onward to the universe in contemplation and wanderlust. Tapestries have traditionally hung in peoples’ homes as insulation and decoration. With BOLTS we offer a modern interpretation in the form of blankets that can embellish our living spaces, warm us through the chills of winter and blasts of air conditioning in summer, and even provide us with comfortable seating for convivial springtime picnics.

The BOLTS blankets use traditional images: monarchs in profile, bouquets of fruit and wine, nudes with livestock, enchanted landscapes, all liberated by synthetic colors and kinetic forms that would have been beyond the reach of the handlooms of the past. The quoted artworks, no longer ecclesiastically enshrined, present themselves as intimate companions, in the guise of blankets. The creatures and characters that populate these textiles are freed of the authority they used to embody. But they still remind us, in an era defined by the ascendancy of invisible forces, that sight comes before words and that we never lose our primal desire for beauty, food, nature and ornament.

Oona Brangam-Snell is a New York based textile artist whose work highlights the enduring power of traditional symbols and the emerging power of contemporary iconography, in an era defined by the digitization of fabric production. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Brangam-Snell is influenced by centuries of textile production, from medieval tapestries to theater curtains. She works as a fabric designer for the textile firm Maharam.

Her work has been in group shows, including exhibitions at Woods Gerry in Providence; The (Hot) Pink Salon in the West Village; and the Paisley Exhibit curated by artist Peter Hristoff at the School of Visual Arts. She has carried out a number of private commissions in New York and Toronto, and most recently completed a mural for Dewey Dufresne’s new shop, Byggyz, on the Lower East Side. This is Brangam-Snell’s first solo exhibition.

A Pre-Valentine's Day workshop for participants to create a personalize flower arrangement with local, and seasonal flower for someone Special Special. The workshop was co-hosted by flower specialist Mackenzie Younger with aesthetic demonstrations from K Bao Luu, complete with an art school critique at the end. 

For the Inaugural Creative China Festival, Special Special in collaboration with Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) presents LUYANG Asia Character Setting Show. Featuring edgy garment design and contemporary Chinese media art by the acclaimed contemporary artist and designer Lu Yang. 

Lu’s video and new media art merges science, computer programming, and digital imaging technologies (e.g. infrared camera image and X-ray), with moving image and various types of new media. Her fashion design, which is part of her own label: Lu Yang Asia, is deeply rooted in the context of anime, gaming, and sci-fi subcultures. As well as exploring complex issues such as mortality, mental illness, neuroscience, religion, and sexuality.

Presented as part of the Creative China Festival, this presentation of Lu Yang’s new media art and fashion designs offers an insight into the current trends of contemporary Chinese art and fashion exploring elements of edgy, urban and anime-inspired culture.

Lu Yang (b.1984) is a Shanghai-based multi-media artist who creates fantastical, often morbid visions of death, mental illness, and neurological constructs of both real lifeforms and deities. Her work is deeply immersed in the subcultures of anime, video games, and sci-fi. Lu Yang earned two degrees from the new media art department of the China Academy of Arts. Her work has been presented both in China and abroad, including USA, Japan, Germany, Denmark, UK, Turkey, Canada, Russia, and Australia. In 2015, her work was presented in the China Pavilion of the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Special Special presents Moon Baby Boo! A Halloween ensemble starring: Ghost, Angel, Skull, and Pumpkin (GASP!).

Fashioned in Tyvek by K Bao Luu, designed with Seokhoon Choi. Wear white or give color. Write onto them love poems or hexes. Paint the town red. Moon Baby is the oeuvre of K Bao Luu—a collection of objects that read as lyrics, fashioning clothes of tomorrow.

Exhibition Duration: October 13 (friday) – November 1, 2017. Each costume was made in our backroom by K Bao Luu, in an edition of 4. Editorial photographs by Wen-You Cai.