Curtis Cuffie

FLAMINGO EAST

Curated by Kenny Schachter

COVER MAGAZINE

by Alan Moore

June 1992

The street artist whose constructions have bemused Cooper Square area residents for a year or more has had mounted a one-man show in the elegant upstairs rooms of the East Village supper club. In this exuberant gathering, some twenty draped and festooned armatures evince distinctive personalities as Cuffie's touch--his choices from the city's bounty of refuse--conjoins the antique and the garish new. Cuffie is a stylist of exceptional talent and versatility. The basic step in building a work for him seems to grow out of adorning the self--he is always strikingly dressed. Then, as he festoons an armature with ties, belts, bows, scarves, skirts, wigs, hats, clothes hangers and stuffed animals, a personage, or couple, or group comes into being.

Some works with a few stark elements include an untitled wooden stand with a fancy cast iron base, and atop it a mop head with a plastic knit cap; below the mop hangs a penguin doll and a pair of ice skates. The simplest is the gaudy standout, a tripod wrapped with gold foil stuck on with orange neon tape, a peasant-style broom tied to one leg. Cuffie, who matches his artworks with an engaging cryptic and personal wit, named this piece "New York", said freelance curator Kenny Schachter, who (with Flamingo owner, Darrell Maupin) organized the show. "He said, 'All that gold and so much free space."'

Flamboyant and poignant, Cuffie's works are fragile, tenuous in their hold on sculptural identity. They fall apart easily, and once they have been disassembled, they're junk again. But as I sat in the closed gallery watching actors rehearse their lines and costumers at work on an upcoming show at the club, Cuffie's sculptures seemed the perfect backdrop for such archetypical bohemian activity: open, inclusive, and making-do brilliantly. His works are compelling.