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THEARTWORLD
PROTO-GOTH
O
ne recent Sunday evening, Alexan-
der Shulan, the thirty-three-year-
old owner of the Lomex Gallery, in Tri-
beca, was pacing the space, worrying about
his gallery’s potential ruin. In a couple of
hours, as part of the first major New York
retrospective of the Swiss artist H. R.
Giger since his death, in 2014, Shulan was
ment hunting?” “Best chicken fingers in
L.A.?” “I’m gonna answer that one,” she
said, tapping her screen, “because the
answer is Delilah”—a West Hollywood
club frequented by Drake—“obviously.”
“‘Who were your celeb childhood/
teenage crushes?’ Vin Diesel. I’m just
warming up with light ones right now,”
she said, running a Google Image search
for Diesel. “You’ve gotta add a photo,”
she explained. Posted. Back to the ques-
tions: “How to get over job rejection?”
“How to learn to love yourself ?”
“Let me think about this one,” she
said, biting her lip. “Sometimes I dictate,
because the font gets so small.” Seven
minutes later, she posted a paragraph
about journaling, gratitude lists, and
doing more of what you love. “I always
try to couple woo-woo with practical.”
A man approached. “Tinx? I met you
at the Grove a while ago, when I was
with my girlfriend—well, ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry,” Najjar said.
“No worries.” He worked at a dentist’s
office. “We handle a lot of celebrity cli-
entele,” he said. “I’d love to hook you up.”
“You’re so sweet,” Najjar said.
“I low-key want to get you in the of-
fice just to make my ex jealous,” he said.
Najjar laughed uncomfortably. “I actu-
ally want to get her jealous right now.”
The dental guy scooted next to her
for a selfie and dropped a business card.
“Let’s see,” Tinx said, resuming scroll-
ing: “‘Thoughts on texting the guy and
not responding to his response?’
“We waste so much time on games,”
she said. “You have to just think, like,
Why am I playing this game? More
often than not, it’s ego.”
—Sheila Yasmin Marikar
staging an avant-metal concert, which,
fearing pandemonium, he’d decided not
to publicize. He’d heard things about
past Giger shows. Two fans had played
football inside a gallery in New York.
In Berlin, Julian Schnabel had opened
an exhibition the same day as Giger’s;
a handful showed up for Schnabel and
thousands queued around the block
for Giger. At the opening of the Lomex
show, in January, hundreds had swarmed
the tiny space, despite a nor’easter. Some
visitors had been reduced to tears, a few
pulling back sleeves or pant legs to re-
veal tattoos that matched the art. “It’s a
pilgrimage,” Shulan said.
Shulan, who had on black jeans, a black
button-down, and black sneakers, has re-
vered Giger since he was a teen-ager. “It
was this obsession for me,” he said. “I met
his agent five years ago through Face-
book.” Giger is best known for design-
ing the creature in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,”
but he also created some nightmarish
album artwork, for such musicians as
Danzig, the Dead Kennedys, and Deb-
bie Harry. He’d never heard of Harry be-
fore he met her (and became smitten), in
1980, on a trip to the States to collect his
visual-effects Oscar for “Alien.” In 2002,
he pulled up to the last major American
exhibition of his work in a hearse. Some-
thing of a proto-goth, he kept company
with Salvador Dalí and Timothy Leary.
In the gallery, Shulan was scheming
with his assistants pro tempore (a gag-
gle of clipboard-wielding young women
in black) when the expected throng of
Lower East Side scenesters and new
Pratt grads flooded in. The throne Giger
designed for Alejandro Jorodowsky’s
never-made “Dune” adaptation was the
first thing they saw. “My son would love
it for gaming,” a guest named Matthew
Rosenberg said, peering at the nearly
seven-foot-tall glossy black chair mod-
elled on a human skeleton.
“Imagine being a Twitch streamer in
that thing,” another man said to his
friend. They both agreed that “Alien”
was a perfect movie and took a minute
to appreciate some of Giger’s prototypes:
“All the penis images. He kinda based
the head of the alien off of a penis,” one
said. The friend nodded thoughtfully.
Across the room, the former d.j. DB
Burkeman, in joggers and a Mike Kel-
ley T-shirt, was arguing with a painter
about the origins of tentacle porn. Be-
fore them was a wall of three white-on-
black prints from a series Giger did in
1969 of body-horror biomechs––part fe-
male viscera, part Ace Hardware.
“My son was telling me this is like
the anime thing?” Burkeman said.
“Hentai,” an onlooker offered.
“It’s sexual,” Erik Foss, the former
co-owner of the Lit Lounge, said. “It’s
violent, but it’s sensual at the same time.”
Suddenly, the lights flashed off and on
and people headed toward the door.
“What’s happening?” a woman shrouded
in earth-toned cashmere asked.
“A shredding,” a security guard said.
“I’ll keep my mind open so it can get
blown,” she said, following the crowd
up a flight of stairs.
In a loft above the gallery, dark but
for a single strobe light, people gath-
ered around a bearded man whose
shadow was projected monstrously onto
the brick wall behind him. This was
Ocrilim (his bio on Google lists his date
of birth as 1900). He held a Gibson gui-
tar, similar to the model used by Angus
Young, of AC/DC.
“It’s like a poetry reading,” a girl in
a chore coat and Doc Martens said.
“He has long hair, so that means he’s
connected to some crazy biorhythm,”
her friend said.
Without a word, the shredding com-
menced. The Gibson screeched. In the
very back of the room, an art student
whispered to a friend, “Technical metal
is nerdy.”
“Exaltedly nerdy,” his friend corrected.
—Hannah Seidlitz
