Percutaneous Delights, an environment by the Vienna-based artist group Gelatin, is on view at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center through August 30, 1998. With such pleasures as pools, sprinklers, sunbathing platforms, saunas, and even a refrigerated room, Percutaneous Delights transforms P.S.1’s outdoor galleries into a welcoming hang-out for hot summer days.
Percutaneous Delights is the New York debut for this group of young, cosmopolitan Austrian artists who already have a devoted, even fanatical, following in their home country. Gelatin is best-known for its installations, which, like Percutaneous Delights, are often both playful and functional; past projects include a futuristic mini-golf course, an arena for kick-the-can tournaments, and indoor ski-jumping towers.
Since the group’s formation in 1995, Gelatin has also created performances and videos, and has spearheaded an Austrian movement of groups that organize exhibitions, events, parties, and other leisure activities which effortlessly blend genres. Gelatin’s work is in part a product of their varied interests and backgrounds (Members have skills and experiences ranging from animation to political science, city planning to stage design.) and the group often involves musicians, television artists, DJ’s, and performers in its events. Continuing in this vein, Percutaneous Delights will provide the setting for P.S.1’s Warm Up DJ performance series, which runs Saturday evenings through August 29.
Gelatin is Austrian artists Ali Janka, Florian Reither, Tobias Urban, and Wolfgang Gantner.
