If you happen to follow any number of street artists in NYC on Instagram, you would see that a large number of them were all converging on an abandoned building somewhere in the East Village last week. These artists were all painting, pasting and tagging, on walls, stairways, and appliances. On every post, we would see numerous comments from people asking where this place was. It became a pretty hot topic, people asking anyone they knew associated with the street art scene where this building was.
Details were kept to a minimum: at first, no one gave out any information, then, little by little, information was being dropped. The show was given the name Surplus Candy. Hanksy– the NYC street artist who planned the whole thing – gave out a clue a half-hour before the official opening of the show on Instagram. So the only way you were going to get to this one-night-only event was by invitation, or by solving Hanksy’s clue.
This was not your typical art event. There was no free booze and no art for sale; this was for people who wanted to see the work done by artists like Royce Bannon, Russell King, LNY, Icy & Sot, N’DA, Elle, Enzo & Nio during one of the coldest weeks this winter. As for trying to see the it now, you can’t, the doors are locked. As for the building, it’s planned to be either demolished or gutted out. Like how street art should be, the moment was ephemeral:
More photos of the Surplus Candy art show last weekend.
