In New York City, you are never entirely sure what you'll see behind a door or through a window. For a pedestrian, surprises populate even the most routine of routes: from home to the subway. Real estate here has an elastic tendency, with abandoned buildings or lots next to the most trendy restaurant in the neighborhood. Several months later that space will be occupied by anything from a pet store to a massage parlor to a coffee shop. Often, due to the high cost of rent, that business will close and leave the space a ghost of what it tried to be.
This weekend I met my friend in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn for coffee. On our way to caffeinate, we walked past a building with a sign in front that read, "The Invisible Dog." My friend lives in the neighborhood had been there before and suggested that we pop in: it's an art gallery! Left to my own devices, I would have never thought to go in, briskly walking past it without even noticing its beautiful, historic wooden doors.
The gallery was enjoyable and interesting, with a photography exhibit in the basement and an installation called "(Naked) Absence -- (Blinging) Presence...(Dis) Appearances" on the first floor (the photo above, taken on my iPhone, shows part of this installation It was a dark smoke-filled room with the only light shining directly on a plastic life-size naked man. There was surround-sound music that resembled a beating heart.)
For me, the building itself, an old factory that lay abandoned for many years, was the most intriguing part of the gallery, although it only offered a backdrop to the art it housed. On the The Invisible Dog Art Gallery website, the history of 51 Bergen Street is described as the building that manufactured the invisible dog trick: a stiff leash and collar surrounding the empty space where a dog would be. This gimmick struck gold in the 1970s. The website recounts, "A mixture of party-hearty silliness and tongue-in-cheek trompe l’oeil, the [invisible dog] trick became an icon of its era. But eventually public taste moved on; meanwhile, over the years, the Brooklyn neighborhood was changing. The factory closed its doors in the late 1990s; the boarded-up building was a blight on its quiet Brooklyn block." As an homage to the building's history, they sell invisible dog leashes in the gallery.
You never know what is behind a door, or what you'll see if you turn to look in a window (hopefully it's not a fresh-out-of-the-shower toweled neighbor, as I did this morning, across my apartment courtyard. Pull your curtains down, please!). Here's a quote that resonated with me, from The Invisible Dog's website:
One of the most complex and crucial questions of twenty-first century culture is how to preserve history while simultaneously making way for the new. Nowhere is this dilemma more peaked than in New York, where constant motion and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change have long dominated the ethos. But today New Yorkers are increasingly aware of the value of preservation, of both the natural world, our city’s legacy, and our communities. Recent civic projects like the High Line signal a subtle but undeniable shift in New York culture: now, repurposing already-existing architecture seems more of the moment than does anything brand new. Call it gentrification backlash, call it environmentalism, call it recession chic, but its effects are palpable, and sometimes, startlingly touching.
