Wild art show has visitors tripping out and staring into strangers’ eyes: ‘It’s amazing’
What are you looking at?
A mysterious art show is tricking New Yorkers into tripping out — and staring into each other’s eyes.
The wild exhibit, “Bobby Anspach: The Beautiful Nothing,” features a pair of kooky contraptions — tangles of wires, lights and colorful pom-poms — that look like something a mad scientist built with junkyard scraps or a child designed using materials in their playroom.
Take note: the late artist Anspach had a penchant for pom-poms.
Visitors to the dazzling display, consisting of two fantastical installations from his wild “Places for Continuous Eye Contact” series, pair up and step into an enclosed tent covered in vibrant pom-poms, with two seats facing each other.
The fully engulfed participants gaze at each other while draped in pom-pom blankets and engulfed by tall, hanging helmets covered with the fuzzy orbs.
Or one can choose a solo self-stare and lie down on a tiger blanket-draped hospital bed under a dome made of — you guessed it — pom-poms, then gaze up into a mirror amid a kaleidoscope of color with bright lights, wires and tape spilling out from every angle.
“It’s kind of like psychedelics or meditation, where it’s like you’re able to just transport to someplace else,” Sara Griffin, a spokesperson for the weekends-only Meatpacking District exhibit, told The Post, explaining that the experience almost tricks guests into meditating.
It’s a truly immersive installation.
“You’re really getting into the art here,” Griffin quipped. “This kind of continuous eye contact is really about a broader social connection and love for yourself and for everyone else.”
Reservations can be made online, but plenty of people wander in off the street when the strange scene attracts their attention through the glass windows — and they end up staring into a stranger’s eyes in the tent.
Sara Atri was pulled into the space by her 11-year-old daughter Tamara, an art fanatic who was fascinated by the pieces and sat patiently on the floor as she awaited her turn, mesmerized by the artistic spectacle.
The mother-daughter duo visiting from Mexico City sat across from one another, barely discernable from each other among the pom-poms during their “mind-blowing” experience.
“It makes you travel through colors and suddenly you disappear,” the elder Atri told The Post. “It’s amazing.”
While everyone is led through the experience by a guide — mostly actors trained to manage all that it entails — you’re given minimal information about what to expect. Put an eye patch on one eye, place a pair of headphones over your ears, listen to a curated playlist and stare straight ahead until the guide retrieves you after 3½ minutes.
Visitor Anna Hogan had a “powerful,” “surreal” experience, unlike anything she’d ever encountered, she said, describing her solo experience as “stepping into a dream or a hallucinogenic journey.”
“It was fascinating to stare at myself in that space,” the Upper East Sider told The Post. “It invited deep self-reflection while also making me feel part of something much larger.”
Some have ended their encounter dancing with glee — while other emotional visitors have left in tears.
Two people who are particularly moved by just being in the space are Bobby Anspach’s parents, Jane and Bob, who are doing what they can to honor the memory of their son, Robert J. “Bobby” Anspach.
The artist struggled with his mental health and drowned in Beacon, New York, in July 2022 at the age of 34.
His parents started the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation and have taken his installations across New York to continue his life’s work.
“He was a giver and wanted to give this gift of hope to people,” Jane told The Post. “He thought this could cure the world.”
The exhibit is open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at Azure, 38 Little W. 12th St., through Nov. 10.
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