Enchanting and imaginative dreamscapes overtook the 17th floor of The Standard High Line for Grindr’s epic celebration of PRIDE this weekend. VisionaireWORLD dreamt up more than anyone could have imagined by curating 5 incredible artists to tell the perfect bedtime story for the event, SLUMBR.
Each of the 5 artists had their own room, which housed their dream-invading installation. From a room full of pillows to a tramp stamp rodeo, SLUMBR was just what the doctor ordered. Here is a round up of each artists and a look into their dreamscape:
Ian Isiah
Born and raised in New York, Ian Isiah coalesces the futuristic sound of auto-tuned music and sensuality of D’Angelo to create his own place in the world of R&B music. Having been inspired by the likes of Jazmine Sullivan and Musiq Soulchild, Isiah’s presence in the music industry is a testament of his church upbringing, musical family and his definitive attention to emotion.
Under one of the most radical music labels, UNONYC, Isiah released The Love Champion, his debut mixtape featuring 10 songs and fellow culture-benders Le1f and Mykki Blanco. Not only is Isiah musical, he has tapped into the artistry of the fashion industry. He considers himself to be a “culture earring for people to pierce themselves with”, he told noisey.com. Groundbreaking and luxury streetwear brand, Hood By Air, has consulted Isiah’s creative insight and named him the international brand ambassador. Isiah and Hood By Air’s designer, Shayne Oliver, grew up together and consider the brand to be their culture. “Hood By Air is a person that’s ready for the world and Hood By Air is a person that knows what they want. It’s just like me because that is me,” he told noisey.com.
R&B artist Tank is a huge inspiration for Isiah. He strives to be the “Tank in the gay world” and the genderless world. Recently, Isiah released an alluring visual for his single “247” highlighting his unconventional and sensual persona along with his soft, but striking voice that the art and music scene desires.
Walking into Isiah’s dreamscape was like entering a high-energy recording session. Isiah serenaded the audience with lullabies, freestyles and encouraged the audience to own the stage as well. Everyone was a performer in Isiah’s room.
Jacolby Satterwhite
Jacolby Satterwhite, prominent digital artist, uses his body to tackle gender politics, digital life and imaginative visuals. Through 3-D animation, video, handmade costume and electronic devices, Satterwhite’s performances references Surrealism, postmodern dance and unconventional art. His mother, Patricia Satterwhite, was the breath behind his most recent body work, The Matriarch’s Rhapsody, in which he utilized her drawings and music recordings repurposing them into a performative animated narrative.
Jacolby has developed a language through his movement because of his practice of vogueing and passion for modern dance. Hailing from South Carolina, Satterwhite earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. He currently lives and works in New York.
“Everything is very organic in New York,” Satterwhite said. “I worked in very private spaces before, I had reclusive tendencies. It was a very autonomous practice. Now, it’s just a much more extroverted and collaborative environment. Education is forced into you.” Satterwhite has had many teaching experiences for art programs nationwide and his works have been featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and a host of others.
Satterwhite’s dreamscape was turned into the Slumbr Green Screen Room evoking a casting call in Central Park. In vintage Helmut Lang, participants spanked and whipped one another in front of a green screen for a visual of pain meets pleasure.
Jake Brodsky
Jake Brodsky, NYC’s very own, worked in fine dining and noticed the amount of waste that would take place in restaurants and grew inspired to create something that would not only preserve good food, but be much more accessible to the public. With this passion, he developed Whip NYC, a catering service committed to providing a light and fresh approach to exciting market driven food for exciting events. Brodsky is the founder and executive chef who strives to maintain the collaboration of art and cuisine.
“It’s funny because a lot of people say ‘Oh, you know, my Mom’s a very good cook’, but I lived with my Father and he was a horrible cook,” Brodsky said. “I started cooking around 10 or 11 just because I couldn’t stand the food that my Father made.” Being that Whip NYC is a fairly new catering service, this will be the first time that the company does a major installation of art and cuisine. Whip NYC is a company that believes in using only what is at the peak of season, and working with top quality local pruveyors, to create extraordinary everyday meals. To Brodsky, cooking is a such a natural medium to art because it is very visual and interactive. “You give art to people and then it’s gone,” he said. Like many chefs, Brodsky visits the market quite often, striving to never make the same meal twice, and this is the sanctuary for which all of his ideas for meals and events come to life.
Brodsky’s dreamscape was a visit to the gym. Walking in, two hunky men were lifting weights and flexing their perfect muscles. The enticement continued as protein shots with flavors varying from strawberry banana to peanut butter were extended to guests through holes in the walls. Men with amazing arms and impressive reaches handed out the protein shots through the holes and invited interaction from the guests to shake their hands or, if you were in the mood, to kiss it.
Juliana Huxtable
Juliana Huxtable has come a long way from the “conservative Bible Belt town in Texas”, as she described her hometown in Bryan-College Station to Vogue. The painter, poet, DJ and downtown sensation has a bold and defiant vision which has shaped and commanded the attention of many.
Having built her career in New York (and on Tumblr), Huxtable has several accomplishments. She has appeared on the runways of fashion brands such as Hood By Air and DKNY and has exhibited her performance and visual works at major museums such as The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and Los Angeles, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Huxtable is a matriarch within the transgender community, having been featured on Candy Magazine and the muse for Frank Benson’s 3-D sculpture for the opening of the New Museum Triennial. Along with that, Huxtable was the Triennial’s author and subject for 4 other works and was dubbed as the “star of the New Museum Triennial” by Vogue.
Huxtable is the co-founder of the queer party in New York City called #ShockvalueNYC. She has become a beacon and magnet for the gender queer nightlife in NYC and established this movement as a “nightlife gender project”.
A slumber party isn’t a slumber party until you start cuddling with someone. In Huxtable’s dreamscape, guests were offered time to unwind in a white insulated room staged with soft, white pillows covering the floor. Huxtable’s original music played in the background setting a tone of relaxation and romance.
Stewart Uoo
Human identity and the shift within urban environments has inspired a new wave of contemporary artists. Stewart Uoo, hypnotic and oracular in method, is known for his provocative sculptures and photographs. Born in California, Uoo moved to New York where he lives and works as an artist. He has taken the post-internet art scene and transcended it to post-human and post-studio realms.
At the age of 28, Uoo had his first major museum exhibition, Outside Inside Sensibility with Jana Euler, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the exhibition, contemporary portraitures were showcased as Uoo’s cyborg-mannequins were juxtaposed with Euler’s multilayered figurative painting within an environment designed by Uoo. His work is now in the museum’s collection. Uoo is a malleable artist whose emotions drive his work and he finds that it is important to maintain that quality as an artist.
Uoo received his BFA from the California College of the Arts in 2007 and studied at the Staatliche Hochschuler Bildende Künste—Städelschule, Frankfurt, from 2008 to 2012. His work has been shown in the solo exhibition Life is Juicy at 47 Canal, New York. Selected group exhibitions include An-Social Majori , Kunsthall Oslo, Norway; Mobile Device, Bodega, Philadelphia; 179 Canal/Anyways, White Columns, New York; and Avatar 4D, Noma Gallery, San Francisco.
Uoo’s dreamscape made you forget what city and time period you were in. It had the ambiance and appearance of a barn or rodeo in the Wild Wild West complete with 2 cowgirls. Uoo offered a tattoo parlor/cowgirl room for Slumbr guests to get temporarily inked for a night of complete rage.
