Features
Celebrating CBGB’s Bathroom
An artist named Justin Lowe is recreating the bathroom of the iconic New York venue in an installation taking up four galleries of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the graffiti-covered restroom will be represented in part by “walls papered in Day-Glo collages involving movie stars, vintage book covers and illustrations of insects.”
The artist says the installation, which runs June 3 through 5, is inspired by the club’s Surrealist history. If that’s so, the CBGB bathroom reimagined should fit in perfectly at the Wadsworth Atheneum because the museum held the country’s first exhibit of Surrealism in 1931 and was also one of Salvador Dali’s old haunts.
Lowe knows a thing or two about grime and seedy scenes. Last summer he collaborated with another artist in creating a fake methamphetamine lab in the New York gallery Deitch Projects. The “Black Acid Co-op” installation had everything from gurgling beakers and tubes to a melting toilet.
CBGB opened in 1974 and closed in 2006 after a dispute with the Bowery Residents’ Committee over back rent. In its heyday the club featured punk and New Wave bands such as the Ramones, Misfits, The Cramps and Blondie.
Click here for the Wall Street Journal article. (Subscription may be required)