NEST

In the early days of their friendship Dan Colen and Dash Snow created immersive spaces that they called hamster nests. Initially these were private rituals that took place in hotel rooms where, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, Colen (b.1979) and Snow (1981–2009) would tear at the curtains and sheets, rip up any paper materials they could find and roll around in the wreckage like hamsters in a cage. As with the notorious havoc wreaked by celebrities such as Keith Moon and Keith Richards, by the end the rooms were wholly destroyed, a mess of papers, rubbish, spilled beer and bedding. The first nest occurred in 2003, and others soon followed: on a road trip from New York to Miami; in Los Angeles one New Year’s Eve; and in a hotel room in London paid for by the art dealer Charles Saatchi.

In 2007, thirty volunteers spent three days shredding two-thousand New York City telephone books in preparation for one of the most unusual exhibitions ever presented by a New York gallery: Dash Snow and Dan Colen's NEST. Adapting their infamous 'hamster nest' to 76 Grand Street, they reveal to the public a performance they have until now created only in private. The resulting pandemonium is on view, in addition to video and photographic documentation. A 'Hamster Nest' normally consists of their shredding enormous amounts of whatever paper material they can get their hands on and ransacking the interior of their selected space in an exuberant overnight fete. Over the years this has taken place in hotel rooms all over the world, existing only in occasional Polaroids, video, and the memories of exasperated hotel staff. On July 3rd, Dan and Dash invited fifteen fellow artists including Aaron Bondaroff, Hanna Liden, Jack Walls, Nate Lowman, and Adam McEwan to Grand Street, and from midnight to 8am, rolled around together in the waist-deep shredded paper to create this piece. One night proved to be not enough to complete their creative destruction and Dash brought a group of compatriots four additional nights. With paint poles speared into the wall, bottles protruding from hacked-up sheetrock, and a pummeling of enormous wine, pee, and paint spit-balls stuck to the walls, it seems a great deal took place during these night-into-mornings. Dark and brutal slogans commingle with moments of love and tenderness as both sentiments go into creating this ambiguous dwelling.