Lounge Act

On Sunday afternoon, a healthy contingency of artists and people who commission, curate, collect and critique their work, joined together to celebrate the inauguration of Maurizio Cattelan’s Toilet Paper Lounge, an event that coincided, not entirely by accident, with the birthday of the art writer (and T contributor) Linda Yablonsky. In true Cattelan style, the “Lounge” turned out to be the bathroom of Yablonsky’s second floor walk-up apartment decorated, salon style, with postcard images from Toilet Paper, the cheeky, image-driven magazine to which the retired artist now ostensibly devotes himself full time. Lest anyone miss the joke, a stack of November 2011 issues of Toilet Paper was positioned next to a pyramid of actual toilet paper. With all due respect to Cattelan and Yablonsky, whose respective reputations in the art world inspired such cozy camaraderie, the true star of the party was the Kreemart cake, a slab of glistening white-chocolate tiles complete with a roll of edible rice-paper toilet paper and a bowl of chocolate in which to dip it. Guests were encouraged to deface this particular bathroom wall with special pens, resulting in much graffiti of the “for a good time call — ” variety, some rather predictable drawings of male genitalia and wholesale soccer jerseys, given the context, the surprisingly inspired retort: “eat me.” Those who heeded the command were rewarded: the cake was in fact delicious.