Creative Time promised an atypical art event for last night’s “Flaming Youth” fall ball, and they certainly delivered — with wings, animal masks, and one inventive and hyperactive dude in a spacesuit. The setting was new SoHo nightspot The W.I.P., helmed by the owner of Greenhouse. Guests entered down a long hallway where they could have their faces and bodies painted by artist Shantell Martin, or take their pick from a wall of masquerade-ready accessories. ARTINFO chose a rubber flamingo nose and a set of silky purple wings, naturally, and joined an eclectic crowd that included Marilyn Minter, Mike Starn, Cory Kennedy, Anthony Haden-Guest, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Cecelia Dean, Grey Area’s Kyle DeWoody and Manish Vora, and many others.
There were no self-congratulatory speeches or announcements during the night, just a heady wallop of bass-heavy music (courtesy of DJ Mia Moretti), which included a surprisingly excellent remix of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” We Came In Peace, the firm who designed the entrance hallway’s decor, floated through the crowd bearing gourmet finger food suspended from a pole, all courtesy of Pinch Food Design. While many art-world mixers are about networking, it was definitely too loud to hobnob here, a truth realized by a young friend of Haden-Guest who climbed atop a banquette to dance the night away. Most of the masked, dandified, and bedazzled crowd followed suit, spending the evening on a sweaty dance floor — a plentiful river of Slovakian vodka certainly helped — where artist Jacolby Satterwhite stole the show in a unique spacesuit equipped with a video monitor playing animations.