Artist Julian Schnabel was honored last night at the Domino Sugar Factory—yeah that Domino Sugar Factory, the long-abandoned Williamsburg warehouse that at one point housed the largest sugar refinery in the world, and is poised to soon become luxury apartments at the hand of Dumbo developer extraordinaire Jed Walentas.
The event marked the first time mortals not wearing hard hats or wielding asbestos abatement...swords...were allowed to enter the factory's mysterious interior since the factory shuttered nearly a decade ago. The result was fantastic: Lit entirely by hoards of candles jostling for space at suuuuuper long tables, the place looked like the Great Hall from Steampunk Harry Potter. Wealthy tall people gathered to take photos of each other, admire Schnabel's work, and eat tiny hors d'oeuvres off of tiny silver trays. Everyone was beautiful, and no one said anything about asbestos.
Despite the factory's "rawness" (the word favored by admiring attendees), it turns out a lot of work went in to getting the area primped for the event.
"When I first went to the space to do a site visit three months ago, your feet stuck to the ground because there was molasses on the floor," said Jessica Shaefer, the communications director for Creative Time, which held the event. Though the floors were power washed, the walls were still thick with age-old molasses, though my hands were too busy juggling several flutes of champagne to personally assess their stickiness.
Still, the molasses-y walls and general industrial nature of the hall were an ideal fit for Schnabel's work, which appeared both in the form of large-scale installations on the walls and sculptures arranged in the factory's rear. "We love raw spaces, so we didn't want to make anything too perfect," Shaefer said.
What about those asbestos warning signs posted on the building next door? Shaefer shook her head. "We're not going there tonight," she said.
