The Elaine de Kooning House and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center have teamed up with the artist Eric Haze for an exhibition that takes a deep and unique dive into Mr. Haze’s work. What makes it unique is that it is not located in either venue nor is it in a gallery or museum space. It takes place in the metaverse.
The term “metaverse,” which originated in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” refers to virtual 3-D worlds that users can inhabit much the way they do with virtual reality, but without the need for headsets.
Links to Eric Haze’s digital galleries, a.k.a. “Eric Haze at the EdeK House: There Are Seven Levels,” can be found on the websites of both institutions, and each of those levels is a different digital gallery that engages with Mr. Haze’s art-making.
To be clear, when you enter one of the galleries, you don’t just look. Using the arrow keys on your computer’s keypad or touch-responsive circles on a phone or iPad, you direct your own movement in three dimensions through whichever space you are in.
The origin of the project can be traced to December 2019, when Mr. Haze began his residency at the Elaine de Kooning House. That venue is owned by Chris Byrne, a polymath who has worn many hats in the art world, has a particular interest in visionary or outsider art, and who introduced a reporter to the digital galleries project.
While that residency focused on Mr. Haze’s paintings, some of which were inspired by a painting Elaine de Kooning made of him and his sister when he was 10, his artistic practice is unusually multidimensional.
He began in the 1970s as a graffiti and street artist, adopted the tag “Haze,” and by the early ‘80s he and his cohort were having success in the art world. However, in 1985 he earned a degree in graphic design from the School of Visual Arts and embarked on a career in that field.
One of the first visual artists to define the look and graphic language of hip-hop, Mr. Haze created album covers, logos, and identity design for such clients as the Beastie Boys, Tommy Boy Records, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J. Fashion and streetwear followed with the launch in Japan of Haze, his eponymous clothing brand.
While continuing his design work, he returned to painting, exhibiting internationally, but as recently as 2019 he designed a new uniform for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. He has hand-painted a Honda motorcycle and a Scion automobile, designed watches and Nike sportswear and even a set of glasses for Heineken, and that’s just scratching the surface.
It’s important to know how layered his artistic background is because while you do see paintings in some of the digital galleries, you also encounter a panoply of objects and situations, the references to which are multiple and not always obvious. (There exists a 119-page document that alludes more or less directly to the images in the galleries.)
The project began with Lester Levy, an art collector and patron from Dallas who has worked with Mr. Byrne, a close friend, on several projects. In a phone conversation, Mr. Levy said the idea arose during Covid, “because we were stuck at home far more than we were at other times in our lives. I started playing around with a site called Decentraland,” a metaverse where people could buy space and create their own virtual buildings.
“When we look at art either we’re going to a gallery, or we’re looking at websites on a flat screen, and you can’t interact with anybody,” Mr. Levy said. “I’m watching these metaverses people have and they’re creating their avatars, and they’re going into rooms and they’re able to talk to one another. It allows your reach to be far greater than it was in the past. You can take an artist who’s in Asia and bring them into the metaverse.”
The project developed in collaboration with Mr. Byrne, Lauren Christensen, principal of L+S Creative Group, and Scott Newton, the lead designer for the digital galleries, who runs Regular Projects, a printmaking and industrial design studio based in Fort Worth. “Lester Levy is the visionary on this,” Mr. Byrne said.
The first of the seven levels takes the viewer inside the studio at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton. Since the root of the project was Mr. Haze’s residency there, it seemed to the team a logical place to start.
The first screen is a view through the studio to the vast window at its north side. Several of Mr. Haze’s paintings of the studio itself, created during his residency, are lined up on the left wall. Until you hit an arrow key it looks like a still photograph. In fact, the first level is the only one created by 3-D photographic scanning of an actual space.
If on a computer, pressing the up arrow key moves you toward the window. The left and right arrow keys move you in those directions, so you can circle around until you end up facing the other side of the studio. It’s possible to climb the staircase visible through a doorway on the left. If your forward progress is stopped, you probably have to navigate around a wall or other object in order to continue.
With the exception of one level, Time’s Arrow, you move through the spaces without an avatar, as is the case with VR.
A cautionary note: Expect trial and error mastering the navigation process. As Mr. Byrne said, “I feel this is in its nascent stage right now, it’s not just second nature to move through these spaces. But we’re thinking this kind of digital space is going to be as legitimate as going to an art fair in Miami. I think it’s in service to the content of the artist.”
The second level, Crystal Cave, opens in a dark black-and-white cave whose walls are covered with Mr. Haze’s graffiti. A bright doorway draws you toward it, and when you pass through you are in a brightly lit cave with crystal walls. As you make your way through it, adjusting the direction when you hit an obstacle, you eventually wind up back in the dark cave.
Night Gallery is the third level. At the far end is a video screen that shows Mr. Haze drawing and talking about his work and then pivots to examples of his graffiti before catching up with him driving a car and continuing to talk about his artwork and the art world. Navigating 180 degrees, one finds a room full of Mr. Haze’s portraits, one of which is an homage to the painting Elaine de Kooning made of him and his sister.
The fourth level, Haze X, is a circular space that features not only some of Mr. Haze’s creations -- the Brooklyn Nets uniforms, a Lotus automobile and the Honda motorcycle, a skateboard -- but also works by other artists, including Ashley Bickerton’s “Seascape.”
Skyspace, level five, is a roughly heart-shaped space whose walls are covered with Mr. Haze’s abstract artwork and whose skylight lets in a heart-shaped shaft of light that moves across the room, presumably reflecting the movement of the sun. It is in part a nod to the light artist James Turrell, whose installations include ceiling openings that admit ever-shifting light and color.
Level six, Time’s Arrow -- The Janus Point, is the one gallery that features an avatar, a man floating in an undefined space until you press and hold the V key, after which his footsteps are controlled by the arrow keys. Hitting an icon to the left of the TV-shaped screen flips the figure so that you see him from underneath, which calls to mind Hans Namuth’s iconic photographs of Jackson Pollock painting on a glass pane, shot from beneath it.
The top level, (The) Deep at the Pompidou, alludes to the Pollock painting of the same name that is in the collection of that French museum. The level has five tunnel-like spaces, which suggest the iconic exterior staircases of the Pompidou. Instead of “The Deep,” each tunnel is lined with Mr. Haze’s abstract paintings, some of whose allover compositions echo those of Pollock.
A more conventional show of Mr. Haze’s paintings is now at the Pollock-Krasner House in Springs, where he will talk about his work on May 24.
