VINGT Paris News

It all began Chez Jim........

I run into Whitey Flagg at Jim Haynes one Sunday evening. Jim has Sunday evening soirees for all sorts of people in Paris. We were talking to Crazy Daisy, the 12-year old actress/jewelry designer/bohemian from LA and Tibet. She told Whitey's friend John Agee: ‘You look like Mr. Chic.’, she's right, he does. To Whitey, she said, 'And you’re Motorcycle Boy.'

I thought the 12 year old would leave a trail of devasted men in her wake and asked her if when she hit puberty if she would become a professional bitch? Crazy Daisy thought that was pretty funny. An e mail she sent to John a week later came with the subject line: HELLO DARLING…

Whitey and I found out we were both artists, and decided to meet up sometime in the future. I thought Whitey and John were a couple, but I wasn't quite sure.......I love that ambisexual thing though. Intruiged, I thought, these people are worth seeing again. In the constant merry-go-round that is Paris one gets weary of those passing through but this was to prove a fortuitous encounter.

I V Y paris: History of a Gallery on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

IVY paris, a collective gallery that started out on 25 Rue Keller in the Bastille had everything that could happen, happen to it – in the span of four months and four days. The front glass door was smashed in on Christmas Eve, right after the opening show. A black SUV was upside down in front of the gallery with a woman inside bleeding to death, screaming. Sometime later, a Swedish gambler with a taste for wine that comes in boxes, adopted the space and would roll dice in the middle of the gallery, laughing like a diabolical hamster, and occasionally break dance. New Year’s Eve was the launch party for the Salon series and four people came from New York, four people came from Romania and ate all the food while no one danced to the 400 euro DJ. After midnight, some French gangsters came in, saying they had just gotten out of prison. IVY was that kind of place. It was beautiful, but doomed.

From it's birth in a ramshackle Bastille gallery, (having be conceived it in a ramshackle Bastille bar), find out how I V Y paris evolves........

This story was inspired by a series of transcribed conversations with Paris-based American surrealist artist, Matt Rose.