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“Living Legend” Patti Astor will appear live to give “Art Talks” Thurs. July 14 (6:30) and Sun. July 17 (3:00) on her re-creation of the historic FUN Gallery, a “show within a show” at MOCA’s “Art In The Streets”, Geffen Contemporary.
In 1981 Patti Astor was famous as “The Queen of The Downtown Screen”. Having worked with such directors as Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch and Eric Mitchell, she was starring in her 12th beyond low budget “No Wave Cinema” film, UNDERGROUND USA, ( the punk rock Sunset Boulevard), enjoying a six month run as the midnight movie at the St. Mark’s Cinema.
FAB 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite) had come downtown to check it out and so the “King of Uptown” met the “Queen of Downtown”.
Unbelievably at that time no one in the downtown Mudd Club scene had ever heard of graffiti art, breakdancing or rap. That was soon to change and with partner Bill Stelling, Patti opened FUN Gallery, the first art gallery in NYC’s East Village. From 1981-1985 this gritty tenement storefront was the epicenter of the early 80’s cultural explosion in art, music and dance. With FAB 5 Freddy leading the way, downtown punk rock met uptown hip-hop. English rockers Clash and the Sex Pistols partied with Futura 2000 and the Rock Steady Crew, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf traded tags with DONDI and LEE and Jean Michel Basquiat spun platters with Afrika Bambaata, everyone rocking to the box at the FUN, while renowned collectors, art historians and museum directors joined in the party.
Astor continued her pioneering ways with a starring role in Charlie Ahearn’s landmark 1983 hip-hop film Wild Style. Her film career was recently featured in the documentary “Blank City”.
Though the FUN Gallery’s duration was brief, the barriers had come down and the art world would never be the same.
